US DHS moves to store biometric data on AWS Cloud

The US Department of Homeland Security plans to upgrade its biometric identity management system with a new system running on the AWS Cloud.

The department has released a request for information to market seeking vendors capable of supplying an upgraded system for the department's Office of Biometric Identity Management (OBIM).

OBIM is tasked with matching, storing, sharing and analysing biometric data to provide identity information and analysis to the department and its partners, for purposes including national security and public safety.

The OBIM's services are used by agencies including the US Coast Guard, the US Secret Service, the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) and Customs and Border Protection (CBP).

The OBIM is in the process of developing HART (Homeland Advanced Recognition Technology), a replacement biometric system built on AWS. The system will reside in the AWS FedRAMP certified GovCloud and will feature a microservice architecture based on RedHat OpenShift.

The DHS said it is seeking vendors with the ability to provide capabilities for the new system including replacement biometric examiner software tools, a web portal for DHS partner agencies, DevOps accelerated development and automated delivery, biometric matching, reporting and analytics capabilities, mobile applications, cloud security and preventive maintenance.

The HART system will replace the existing IDENT biometric matching system, which contains biometric data on around 250 million people.

HART will be designed to include all the capabilities of IDENT, with potentially additional biometric matching capabilities such as DNA, palm print or physical marking matching.

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