A method for protecting a biometric template, comprising the steps of: retrieving an original vector (V) representing said biometric template, said vector comprising a plurality of original elements (v1, v2, . . . vi, . . . , vn); mapping at least some elements from said original vector to a protected vector (P) comprising a plurality of protected elements (p1, p2, . . . pi, . . . , pn−m+1), the mapping being based on multivariate polynomials defined by m user-specific coefficients (C) and exponents (E).