Tighten security with Biometric

United States awarded US-VISIT system development contract to Accenture LLP. It is worth up to $10 billion and considered as a big security project to develop and expand biometric technology for checking identities of foreigners visiting America.

The events of September 11, 2001 carried with them many messages of change. The message is: There is a need of technology to identify living person to stop illegal and terrorism attacks. Biometric is one of such needed systems.

Biometric technology is..

Biometric technologies are defined as "automated methods of identifying or authenticating the identity of a living person based on a physical or behavioral characteristic.

It is the scientific discipline of observing and measuring relevant attributes of living individuals or populations to identify active properties or unique characteristics.

" Unique physical traits, such as fingerprints, iris scans, voiceprints, faces, signatures or the geometry of the hand, can be used. All of those technologies share a methodology involving enrollment and verification. At enrollment, the person offers a "live sample" of the biometric, such as a fingerprint. This is canned electronically, processed and stored as a template.

Biometrics can look for patterns of change by measuring attributes over time or look for consistency by measuring attributes of identity or unique differentiation. When looking for patterns of change, biometric technology can be considered a tool for research, diagnosis, or even medical monitoring.

Using biometric technology for security purposes, a permanent personal attribute, unique to an individual and not easily duplicated, determines privilege or access.

With biometrics technologies, there are three authentication methods, or categories of characteristics used today are:

1. Something you know – a password, PIN, or personal information such as your mother’s maiden name.
2. Something you have – an ATM card, credit card, driver’s license,smartcard, PKI, or token.
3. Something you are – a unique personal trait such as a fingerprint,signature, or voiceprint.

Consumer Biometric Applications gives a more formal definition—a biometric is a unique, measurable characteristic or trait of a human being for automatically recognizing or verifying identity. This definition uses several pertinent words that are vital to understanding biometrics.

1. Unique—For something to be unique, it must be different from all others and have no equal.

2. Measurable—For identification to be accurate and reliable, the item being measured must be easily quantifiable and dependable (i.e., hair color would not be measurable because it can be easily changed).

3. Characteristic or Trait—Identity is verified through who a person is or what a person does. Characteristics or traits can be divided into physiological (i.e., fingerprints, eyes, and voice) and behavioral (i.e., signature and keystroke) patterns. The characteristic or trait should be measurable by a sensor and converted into a quantifiable, digital format.

4. Automatic—In terms of biometrics, automatic refers to recognizing or verifying a characteristic or trait quickly and with minimal human interaction.

5. Recognition—A person is recognized when he or she can be identified as being known. A biometric technology attempts to identify a person based on characteristics or traits. In other words, the system compares submitted biometric information presented by the actual person against a group of stored biometric samples. This process is frequently called a one-to-many match.

6. Verification—Verification is achieved by establishing accuracy or correctness. A biometric technology accomplishes verification by comparing a stored biometric sample previously given by that individual (and identified as such at the previous time) with the actual person. This process is often called a one-to-one match.

7. Identity—Identity is the condition of being the actual person and being able to link specific data (e.g., fingerprints, voice, eye patterns, etc.) to oneself.

There are several biometrics technologies identified to prevent terrorism and improve security aspects.

Biometrics Technologies

1. Fingerprint
2. Facial Recognition
3. Hand Geometry
4. Middleware
5. Iris Recognition
6. Voice Verification
7. Signature Verification
8. Multimodal Biometrics
9. AFIS/Live-Scan

Fingerprint looks at the patterns found on the fingertip includinglocation and direction of ridge endings and bifurcations.

Hand Geometry analyzes and measures the shape of the hand including height and width of bones and joints in the hands and fingers.

Retina analyzes the layer of blood vessels in the back of the eye.

Iris measures furrows and striations found in the colored ring of tissue that surrounds the pupil.

Facial analyzes and measures facial characteristics. Common feature extractions are position and shape of nose and position of cheekbones.

Voice patterns (frequency, duration, and cadence) are transformed into text for a voice-to-print match.

Signature features such as speed, velocity, and pressure are analyzed to create this unique print.

According to International Biometric Group, there will be different market shares in competitive biometrics technologies market.

1. Fingerprint (48%)
2. Facial Recognition (12%)
3. Hand Geometry (11%)
4. Middleware (12%)
5. Iris Recognition (9%)
6. Voice Verification (6%)
7. Signature Verification (2%)

Here is detail of wide applications of biometric technologies.

Biometric Applications

1. Travel and transportation
2. Border control
3. Homeland security
4. Healthcare
5. Banking and finance
6. Access control
7. Airport security
8. Law enforcement
9. Automotive
10. Cyber security
11. Encryption and watermarking

As with many interesting and powerful developments of technology, excessive concern with the biometric may have the effect of eclipsing a more general critical faculty. Biometrics may become associated with severe miscarriages of justice if bedazzlement with the performance of the technology blinds us too.

Further Readings at International Biometric Group