Over two-thirds of respondents to a recent poll said that biometrics were the way forward in the verification of one's identity, according to Unisys.

The use of fingerprint scans has been endorsed as the best way to confirm a person's ID for such things as banking and the accessing of other important documents, as it avoids any chance of identity fraud.

However, the method still falls behind the use of a more traditional solution - the personal password - as a preferred authentication technique, with one per cent more of the interviewees agreeing with it as the best system.

Terry Hartmann, the vice-president of the global identity and credentialing practice at Unisys, noted that people who understood the concept of biometrics properly were much more willing to accept it as an idea.

He said there were "higher trust levels in regions where governments and other organisations already embrace biometrics such as Malaysia and Australia, and in the UK where the issue is now getting strong market exposure with a proposed national ID card."

Unisys started way back in 1886, when one of the founding companies, American Arithmometer Company, was created by William Seward Burroughs.

In a recent survey of SMEs for Connect, the two most important benefits of outsourcing were guaranteed response times and allowing in-house IT staff to concentrate on more strategic issues.