To address this, the National Institute of Standards and Technology and FBI Biometric Center of Excellence are working to develop standards and testing methods for contactless fingerprint scanners.

The technology already exists to scan fingerprints without touching a device but his new approach brings new challenges.

"The largest challenge we are facing is that this new technology produces images that are fundamentally different than existing images," said Michael Garris, NIST biometrics senior scientist.

When a person presses their hand against a scanner or an ink-tipped finger to a piece of paper, the elastic nature of skin spreads and distorts the fingerprint. Because most current fingerprint methods require contact, records almost always contain distorted prints, making it difficult to match the records to readouts from a contactless scanner.

NIST is currently working with contactless technologies from MorphoTrak and 3M Company, though the research institute is looking for more partners to join the Cooperative Research and Development Agreement (CRADA).

Together, the CRADA team will create a set of standards for testing these technologies, ensuring they are accurate and creating interoperable schema to work with legacy systems.

Aaron Boyd is an awarding-winning journalist currently serving as editor of Federal Times — a Washington, D.C. institution covering federal workforce and contracting for more than 50 years — and Fifth Domain — a news and information hub focused on cybersecurity and cyberwar from a civilian, military and international perspective.

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