Recently the Graduate Management Admission Council (GMAC) has been given permission by the French government to collect biometric data on those sitting in for the GMAT exam. Business schools around the world use the GMAT as a predictor of a candidate’s academic success. A good score can make or break a student’s chances for admission into their chosen graduate program so the stakes are high. Apparently, the pressure is great enough that test-taker fraud is growing to be a huge concern. So much so, that, for security reasons, the GMAT routinely fingerprints and photographs candidates for identification. The French, naturally cautious about biometrics and the implications for civil liberties, would not allow the collection of fingerprints for identification. But, not to worry, the clever people at GMAC have found an alternative biometrics solution: Palm vein patterns. With a simple device they can use infrared light to scan a potential test taker’s palm and compare the vein pattern with an earlier scan taken upon test registration (IR vein print trans-illumination for the ultra-hard core biometric geek). For reasons not entirely clear to us, this form of identification is considered less of a threat to civil liberties than other forms of biometrics perhaps because the whole hand is involved rather than just a finger or two? Slap me five, partner!
So now a question for the wise: How do they know the gallery print (the image established prior to the test) is the real deal and not an impostor also? The GMAT candidates in France surely don’t have an established longitudinal database of palm prints over the years that can be used to verify the authenticity of a given candidate. Well I suppose any effort helps in establishing a better lock on the authenticity so kudos GMAC! It’s good to know that the good people at the Graduate Management Admission Council are not afraid to use biometrics to protect the security of their test and save the world from the potential threat of dumb upper graduates, because we have enough of those running around already.
