On May 18, 2023, the Mas+Cara initiative won the 1st Prize of the XVIII US Entrepreneurship Ideas Contest, an initiative promoted by PDI (Teaching and Research Staff).
The Mas+Cara initiative arises to solve a fundamental problem that is slowing down the large-scale deployment of biometric recognition systems and that will slow it down even more if it is not solved: recognition solutions do not adequately protect biometric data. Currently, this data is compared in the clear, that is, without encryption, when a verification is carried out. That procedure is not secure because an attacker only has to wait for verification to obtain them. With them, in addition to impersonating identities, people's privacy is put at risk. For example, individuals can be tracked if they have registered with different systems (a bank, football club, hotel, festival, etc.). Biometric data, once compromised, should not be reused. The problem is that, unlike passwords, a person's biometric traits are few and cannot be changed. Mas+Cara protects biometric data, converting it into irreversible, revocable and unlinked data, and processes it protected, thereby preserving people's privacy. Mas+Cara offers long-term security because it protects data with cryptographic algorithms that are resistant to attacks from quantum computers, which represent a threat to current cryptography.
Promoter team:
Iluminada Baturone Castillo, María Rosario Arjona López, Paula López González, Roberto Román Hajderek y Javier Arcenegui Almenara.
Instituto de Microelectrónica de Sevilla
May 23, 2023