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Todd Fortier is banking on the day when ATMs everywhere will be required to confirm a user's face, voice or thumbprint before spitting out cash.

Biometric security — the use of high-tech electronic equipment to secure identification by verifying unique personal characteristics — has become more common throughout the world since the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

Government agencies and private businesses alike are investing in biometric devices that read and compare fingerprints, eyeball irises, facial features or vocal patterns for security purposes.

Fortier, 19, is among the first group of students enrolled in a new biometric security degree program that started last fall at Davenport University. The 141-year-old private school, which is based in Grand Rapids and has 21 locations throughout southern Michigan and northeastern Indiana, offers degrees in business, technology and health professions.

He's confident that he will be getting into a lucrative field by the time he receives his four-year degree and enters the job market.

“I think with the advancements in this technology and with how security is becoming a really important issue . . . I think there's going to be huge job growth in this field,” says Fortier, a freshman from Kentwood. “From what I've gained from my research, it's looking to replace a lot of older technology, like PIN numbers and things like that.”

Davenport officials said the university is the first in Michigan to offer degrees in the field. About 55 students are enrolled in either the two- or four-year biometric security degree programs at the 13,500-student university.

As a worldwide industry, biometric security has grown from barely $300-million (U.S.) in 2001 to more than $2-billion last year, said Russ Ryan, a spokesman for the National Biometric Security Project. The Washington-based nonprofit group performs testing and research and offers consulting services to government agencies and private corporations.

“Biometrics is the wave of the future. You're seeing fingerprint scanners or readers on every device, from your laptops to your door entry,” said Scott Meuser, systems specialist for D/A Central Inc., a 50-year-old security company based in the Detroit suburb of Oak Park.

Fingerprint scanners have been installed at Walt Disney World theme parks in the Orlando, Fla., area to help keep track of who is using legitimate tickets. Iris-recognition devices have been installed at busy airports in Amsterdam, Netherlands, and Frankfurt, Germany, to help move along passengers.

Reid Gough, dean of Davenport's School of Technology, said the use of biometric security is quickly spreading among financial services companies, retailers and the transportation industry. It is expected to help stem the rise of identity fraud and identity theft.

“As we talked to different people in government — to the NSA, the FBI and different governmental agencies as well as businesses — we identified a need for biometric security, that although companies had the software in place, they were still getting hacked into, people's information was still being stolen,” Gough said.

West Virginia University is the only other college in the country with a degree program in biometrics, officials at the two schools said. Since 2000, it has offered a bachelor's of science in biometric systems that focuses on the engineering and design aspects of biometric devices. The biometric security degree programs at Davenport emphasize the application of biometric science to the field of security in business or government.

At West Virginia, the biometric systems degree is offered through the Department of Computer Science and Electrical Engineering. Arun Ross, an assistant professor in the department, said while some universities offer courses in biometrics, more are likely to follow based on the growing amount of interest being expressed by large companies.

Such companies, including Cisco Systems Inc., a large supplier of routers and other computer networking equipment, have donated to Davenport's biometrics lab on the south side of Grand Rapids. With such gifts, the school receives the latest in teaching equipment and the companies get their names in front of students for a possible recruiting edge, Gough said.

“When we send our students into the workplace, we want them to make an immediate contribution,” he said. “In order to be doing that, they need to be working on the latest and greatest technology, they need to be working on the same equipment that the best companies in the world are working on.”

Students are taught how to create security systems based on their assessments of security needs. Some privacy advocates have concerns about fingerprints and other physical information gathered for security purposes being used maliciously, and students are taught to use biometrics ethically, Gough said.

“Everything about you is out there,” he said. “What our job is, is to make sure that the information that's out there is secure and that only the people who should have access to that information, have access to that information.”

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On the Net:

Davenport University: http://www.davenport.edu/

West Virginia University: http://www.wvu.edu/

D/A Central Inc.: http://www.dacentral.com/

National Biometric Security Project: http://www.nationalbiometric.org/