BIOMETRICS

Biometrics are human physical or behavioral characteristics that can be used to identify an individual digitally to grant access to systems, devices, or information.

There are major two categories of biometrics:

1. Physiological Measurements:

Physiological measurements mainly consist primarily of fingerprints, the outline of the palm, the finger, the pattern of the vein, the eye (iris and retina), and the face shape for morphological analysis.

1. Behavioral Measurements:

Behavioral measurements mainly consist of voice recognition, signature dynamics (e.g., pen movement, inclination, the pressure exerted, acceleration, etc.), the way we use objects, gestures, the sound of steps, etc.

BIOMETRIC SECURITY

Biometric security is a mechanism used to authenticate and provide access to a facility or device based on an individual’s physical characteristics being automatically and instantly checked. Since biometric security assesses a person’s body elements or biological data, it is the best and most full-proof physical security technique used to verify identity.

It includes using biometric security software to automatically identify individuals by their behavioral or biological features. Because of its lower price, the biometric technology commonly used most frequently in physical access control is fingerprint recognition. Multispectral sensors are always better than optical sensors among the 2D fingerprint sensors. They are slightly more costly but offer greater precision and more consistent performance.

HISTORY OF BIOMETRIC SECURITY

In this world, the biometric system is not novel. It has been there since the fourteenth century. China had implemented fingerprinting at that time and had begun to take fingerprints from its merchants and their children to separate them from all others. Since then, they are fingerprinting has advanced.

A scientist named Alphonse Bertillon discovered a method in the 19th century, i.e., measurements of a person’s body to recognize them. The photograph of the subject was taken, and the height registered, the length of one foot, an arm, and an index finger. He recognized that specific attributes of the human body, such as the length of the fingers, remain unchanged concerning other physical features, such as hair length, weight, etc. This technique was immediately disapproved since individuals with the exact body dimensions would be wrongly taken as one. Therefore, a scientist based in Scotland, Richard Edward Henry, discovered a new fingerprinting process with the aid of this study.

In 1993, a successful Iris detection at Cambridge University was introduced by John Daugman. In 2000, the FBI installed IAFIS with a database of approximately 47 million prints; an average of 50,000 searches a day; 15% of searches are in lights-out mode, and 2 hours of suspicious searching response time. In 2001, the Biometrics Automated Toolset (BAT) was implemented, providing an effective identification method.

Biometrics has thus established a concrete research base with precise techniques to classify character traits.

APPLICATIONS

There are numerous applications of Biometric Security, but the most common ones are as follows:

• Law enforcement and public security (criminal/suspect identification)
• Military (enemy/ally identification)
• Border, travel, and migration control(traveler/migrant/passenger identification)
• Civil identification (citizen/resident/voter identification)
• Healthcare and subsidies (patient/beneficiary/healthcare professional identification)
• Physical and logical access (owner/user/employee/ contractor/partner identification)
• Commercial applications (consumer/customer identification)
• Smart Phones (secure personal data/chats)

How does Biometric Security Work?

A biometric security system consists of three different components:

Sensors:

This is what records your information as well as reads it when it is necessary to identify your biometric information.

System:

Whether you are using your biometric information to access a computer or something else, there has to be a system storing the information for comparison.

Software:

The software is a set of programs that connects the hardware to the sensor.