King Saud University Granted a United States Patent in Information Security

United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) has recently approved and issued a patent entitled as, “Systems and Methods Improving Cryptosystems with Biometrics”, under US patent number 9,825,761, to King Saud University, Saudi Arabia. The co-inventors of this patent are Dr. Maqsood Mahmud, Prof. Muhammad Khurram Khan, and Prof. K. Alghathbar.

Due to the large-scale proliferation of information and communication systems, security of data is the paramount concern for individuals, corporations and governments alike. Cryptography is a widely accepted solution to the modern security systems and researchers always remain in the pursuit of developing more secure, robust and resilient algorithms to protect critical data and systems from intruders and hackers etc. Biometrics, which refers to methods for uniquely recognizing humans based upon one or more intrinsic physical or behavioral traits e.g. iris and fingerprint, represents the future of information security systems widely embraced by organizations and institutions around the World. Biometrics, when combined with classical and modern cryptographic algorithms, could achieve more robust security without compromising the performance of cryptosystems.  
      
“This invention is an innovative contribution in the field of biometrics-based cryptosystem and it could be used to enhance the secure storage and communication of data. The outcome of this invention meet with the new goals and objectives of Saudi Vision 2030 to transform Saudi Arabia into a knowledge-based economy”, explained by the inventors about their invention.

It is to note that the research and development for this invention was performed at the Center of Excellence in Information Assurance (CoEIA) at KSU when Dr. Maqsood was a PhD student working under the supervision of Prof. Khurram. Currently, Dr. Maqsood is employed as an assistant professor at Imam Abdulrahman Bin Faisal University (Formerly known as Dammam University).
 
The co-inventors pay their gratitude to the KSU leadership and Intellectual Property and Technology Licensing Program (IPTL) for their encouragement, support and assistance.