Biometric Security
One of the most exciting innovations in the security field is biometrics. Biometrics is the study of methods for uniquely recognizing human beings based upon one or more intrinsic physical or behavioral traits.
In information technology, biometic authentication refers to technologies that measure and analyze human physical and behavioral characteristics for purposes of authentification. Examples of physical (or physiological or biometric) characteristics include fingerprints, eye retinas and irises, , facial patterns and hand measurements, while examples of mostly behavioral characteristics include signature, gait and even typing patterns. All behavioral biometric characteristics have a physiological component, and, to a lesser degree, physical biometric characteristics have a behavioral element.
Benefits of Biometrics
Biometric technology advances have resulted in exceptionally sophisticated security and accuracy at reduced costs. Biometric technologies are fast becoming the lynchpin in many personal verification and high security identification systems.
Almost daily, improvements in technology bring increased performance at decreased cost. As a result interest in biometrics is growing exponentially. The wide availability in the marketplace of accurate, less expensive, faster, and easy to use biometric-based verification solutions are evidence of the growing acceptance of biometrics. Biometric authentication [1] is making it easier and cheaper for businesses in all spheres of the global economy to use a variety of automated information systems. It s not just for the CIA anymore.
Applications for Biometrics
Integrated with other technologies such as smart cards, encryption keys, and digital signatures, or used alone, biometrics are beginning to pervade nearly all aspects of the economy and our daily lives, commercial and noncommercial. In Pennsylvania, for example, biometrics are used in lunch programs and in Minnesota they are employed in a school library.
Biometric-based technologies play a key role in personal authentication for many large and small-scale enterprises. These verification uses include physical access control [2], workstation and network access, remote access to resources, transaction security, and Web security. In addition to conventional brick-and-mortar businesses, secure electronic banking, management companies, law enforcement, and health and social services benefit widely from biometric security.
Why Use Biometrics?
There are significant and unique advantages to using biometrics for identifying human beings. Biometrics is precise and impossible to fake. On the other hand, security items such as photo identification cards, metal or physical keys can be lost, faked, stolen, copied, or misplaced. Passwords, too, can be lost or forgotten. They can also be observed or shared. Moreover, people today are expected to remember a whole host of passwords and personal ID numbers for ATMs, wireless phones, e-mail accounts, computer accounts, web sites, and so forth. Biometrics, as a keyless access control method, allow for fast, user-friendly, accurate, reliable, and cheaper authentication for a variety of applications.
Fingerprints, for example, are a uniquely reliable biometric. For nearly a century, fingerprints have been used by law enforcement to identify people. There is voluminous scientific data that supports the idea that no two fingerprints are alike. Although technologies such as face or iris recognition are now widely used, some of these newer biometric methods may require more research to establish their comparable reliability.
Biometrics and Business: Perfect Together
It is of paramount importance that any security or access control system be user-friendly. The process should be as easy and quick as touching a fingerprint scanner, having a picture taken by a video camera, or speaking into a microphone.
