Patients with dermatitis may find that their fingerprint scans are often unsuccessful, due to minute scarring and cracks that disturb the fine ridges in a subject's biometric fingerprint.

In 2013 visitors from 30 countries will be required to submit a photograph and fingerprints if they want to travel to Canada.

The fingerprint scanning software could be a back door into hacking the computer networks of organizations. 

Use of facial recognition technology on popular social networking site Facebook, especially in photo tagging, has raised privacy concerns in Germany, where users must be allowed to give their explicit consent for such potentially privacy-encroaching applications.

The Biometrics Institute has released its 2012 Industry Survey, a look at the trends and developments in the industry over the last 12 months.

A new insole would measure pressure, gait and patterns to verify identity within three steps in high-security facilities.