Comparing Traits: How the Biometrics Measure Up

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The choice of a biometric trait or traits to use in a security system depends on the application; the strengths and weaknesses of each of the four most common biometric identifiers are summarized in the table below. For example, compared with fingerprint recognition, iris recognition allows access to the wrong people less often but currently requires larger and costlier sensors and thus cannot be as easily incorporated into a laptop or other consumer device. Experts concur that in an ideal biometric authentication system, neither the “false accept” rate nor the “false reject” rate should exceed 0.1 percent. In tests conducted by the National Institute of Standards and Technology, however, none of the systems satisfied these error rate requirements.

	Fingerprint	Face	Iris	Voice
Distinctiveness	High	Low	High	Low
Permanence	High	Medium	High	Low
How well trait can be sensed	Medium	High	Medium	Medium
Speed and cost efficiency of system	High	Low	High	Low
Willingness of people to have trait used	Medium	High	Low	High
Difficulty of spoofing the trait	High	Low	High	Low
False reject rate*	0.4 %	1.0 - 2.5 %	1.1 - 1.4 %	5 - 10 %
False accept rate*	0.1 %	0.1 %	0.1 %	2 - 5 %
*Error rates depend on testing environment, sensors used and composition of users in the population.

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