Open Sesame: To enhance accuracy, security systems of the future are likely to assess multiple biometric traits.
Image: Kevin Hand (illustration); Toshiba, Singapore (laptop)
In Brief
- Biometric identification systems are harder to circumvent and easier to use than are traditional systems based on ID cards and passwords.
- Now that economical and powerful microprocessors are available, the technology is spreading.
- Before these biometric systems can reach their full potential, though, developers will have to lower their error rates.
More In This Article
If you are like many people, navigating the complexities of everyday life depends on an array of cards and passwords that confirm your identity. But lose a card, and your ATM will refuse to give you money. Forget a password, and your own computer may balk at your command. Allow your cards or passwords to fall into the wrong hands, and what were intended to be security measures can become the tools of fraud or identity theft. Biometrics—the automated recognition of people via distinctive anatomical and behavioral traits—has the potential to overcome many of these problems.
Compared with a physical token such as a bank card or with the knowledge of a secret such as a PIN, biometric traits are profoundly more difficult to forge, copy, share, misplace or guess. Indeed, they offer the only way of determining whether a person has been issued multiple official documents, such as a driver’s license or passport, under different names. Yet they are quite easy to use as proof of identity. For these reasons, biometric systems have been gaining popularity in recent years. Laptops and mobile phones that can recognize a fingerprint, for instance, are now commercially available. In some countries biometric security is employed to safeguard items such as ATM cards and passports, to determine whether a person can rightfully enter a building or to ensure that someone is entitled to welfare payments. These systems are far from perfect. But with inexpensive sensors and powerful microprocessors now available, biometric technology is certain to become more pervasive.
This article was originally published with the title Beyond Fingerprinting.
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4 Comments
Add CommentMorse telegraphy operators could recognise each other by their 'fist' - the rhythm they used in tapping out the code. The same can be done with a conventional keyboard and there are many more variables. These are the dwell time on each individual key and the times between successive key pairs. The latter will differ, so the value from A - P won't be the same as that from Q - W, say. I know of 2 companies offering software based on this idea and I can't understand why it's not widely used. It's very low-cost - a keyboard is cheap and probably present anyway. And it's difficult to fool. A response that is exactly the same as the reference dataset would be suspect, so hacking the database and copying a target's details wouldn't help. Why aren't more people investigating this?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWhat I dont like about biometrics is the fact that the systems build up a profile of your biometrics data that is used to authenticate you. If a hacker was able to get your vectors that construct your biometrics data, he could reconstruct a profile and use it as an exploit. The true answer to the Privacy problem is Privacy 2.0 a collection of services that anonymize the web and beyond. http://blog.arzoola.com
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAt the GSC we have been trying to bring recognition to, and fund, individuals and start-ups with innovative ideas to improve homeland security issues, and including the biometrics field.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIf you have an innovative idea to solve a security problem (either as an individual or a start-up) you should take a look at the Global Security Challenge website: http://www.globalsecuritychallenge.com.
The winners will gain cash grants totalling over $500,000 USD, mentorship and invaluable publicity and exposure. Entry is free and the closing date is 30 June 2009 for start-ups and SME's!
I work at a biometrics company because I really believe in the technology. The truth is that any technology is only secure when used properly.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAs far as someone a security breach, I can't speak for everyone's technology but our system encrypts the information in a way that biometric data cannot be reconstituted from that information.
Also, as far as failure rates, the finger vein reader has an extremely 1:1 AUTHENTICATION comparison that has a 0.0001% chance (almost no chance) of being fooled with someone else's vein pattern.
The technology is here, and it is very secure.
Working for a biometrics company, it is important for consumers to know that biometric templates, for example, fingervein or fingerprint information, that are used in the private sector are independent of each other. That means that a company cannot sell to or cross reference a template with another database, say the FBI or AFIS or even another company that uses biometric technology. All of this information is encrypted in a very complicated algorithm that only the system can enrolled the template can use to validate and identification/authentication attempt.
m2AnastasiaC
<a href="http://www.m2sys.com/finger-vein-reader.htm">Learn More About Finger Vein Reader Technology</a>