To address the issues like identity theft and security threats, a continuously evolving technology known as biometrics is presently being deployed in a wide range of personal, government, and commercial applications. Despite the great progress in the field, several exigent problems have yet to be addressed to unleash biometrics full potential. This article aims to present an overview of biometric research and more importantly the significant progress that has been attained over the recent years. The paper is envisaged to further not only the understanding of general audiences and policy makers but also interdisciplinary research. Most importantly, this article is intended to complement earlier articles with updates on most recent topics and developments related to e.g. spoofing, evasion, obfuscation, face reconstruction from DNA, Big data issues in biometrics, etc.