1. A method of identifying a biometric record of an individual in a database ( 108 ), the database comprising a plurality of biometric records, the method comprising: during a training phase: applying by a processing device ( 302 ) a matching operation to determine scores for a similarity between at least one training biometric sample of each of a plurality of training records and at least one probe sample; based on said scores, determining by said processing device a threshold value (S TH ,M TH ); and during an identification phase: evaluating at least one reference biometric sample of each of the records of said database to determine a parameter value for each record; selecting a subset of said records by comparing each of said parameter values with said threshold value; and applying a matching operation to the selected records to determine whether an input biometric sample matches a reference biometric sample of one of said selected records.