Preface:

Standards development within the Information Technology sector is harmonized with international standards development. Through the CSA Technical Committee on Information Technology (TCIT), Canadians serve as the SCC Mirror Committee (SMC) on ISO/IEC Joint Technical Committee 1 on Information Technology (ISO/IEC JTC1) for the Standards Council of Canada (SCC), the ISO member body for Canada and sponsor of the Canadian National Committee of the IEC. Also, as a member of the International Telecommunication Union (ITU), Canada participates in the International Telegraph and Telephone Consultative Committee (ITU-T).

For brevity, this Standard will be referred to as "CSA ISO/IEC 19794-7" throughout. At the time of publication, ISO/IEC 19794-7:2007 is available from ISO and IEC in English only. CSA Group will publish the French version when it becomes available from ISO and IEC.

This Standard has been formally approved, without modification, by the Technical Committee and has been developed in compliance with Standards Council of Canada requirements for National Standards of Canada. It has been published as a National Standard of Canada by CSA Group.

Scope:

For the purposes of biometric verification and/or identification, this part of ISO/IEC 19794 specifies a concept and data interchange formats for dynamic signature/sign behavioural data captured in the form of a time series using devices such as digitizing tablets or advanced pen systems. The data interchange formats are generic in that they may be applied and used in a wide range of application areas where handwritten signs or signatures are involved. No application-specific requirements or features are addressed in this part of ISO/IEC 19794. This part of ISO/IEC 19794 contains definitions of relevant terms, a description of what data is captured, two data formats for containing the data — one for general use and one compact format for use with smart cards and other tokens — alongside examples of data block contents and best practice in capture.

Specifying which of the format types and which options defined in this part of ISO/IEC 19794 are to be applied in a particular application is out of the scope of this part of ISO/IEC 19794; this needs to be defined in application-specific requirements specifications or application profiles. It is advisable that stored and transmitted biometric data be time-stamped and that cryptographic techniques be used to protect their authenticity, integrity and confidentiality; however such provisions are beyond the scope of this part of ISO/IEC 19794.