The invention provides a method for iris based biometric recognition. The method includes receiving an image from an image sensor and determining whether the received image includes an iris. The steps of receiving and determining are repeated until the received image includes an iris. Responsive to determining that a received image includes an iris, iris information corresponding to such received image is compared with stored iris information corresponding to at least one iris and a match decision or a non-match decision is rendered based on an output of the comparison. The invention additionally provides a system and computer program product configured for iris based biometric recognition.