BIOMETRICS
Biometrics is the measurement and statistical analysis of people’s unique physical and behavioral characteristics. The technology is mainly used for identification and access control or for identifying individuals who are under surveillance. The basic premise of biometric authentication is that every person can be accurately identified by intrinsic physical or behavioral traits.
The term biometrics is derived from the Greek words ‘Bio’ which means ‘life’ and ‘metric’ which means ‘measure’.
How does biometrics work:
Authentication by biometric verification is becoming increasingly common in corporate and public security systems, consumer electronics, and point-of-sale applications. In addition to security, the driving force behind biometric verification has been convenience, as there are no passwords to remember or security tokens to carry. Some biometric methods, such as measuring a person’s gait, can operate with no direct contact with the person being authenticated.
Types of biometrics: The two main types of biometric identifiers are either physiological characteristics or behavioral characteristics.
TYPES OF BIOMETRIC :
Biometric data can be used to access information on a device like a smartphone, but there are also other ways biometrics can be used. For example, biometric information can be held on a smart card where a recognition system will read an individual’s biometric information while comparing that against the biometric information on the smart card.
Behavioral identifiers include the unique ways in which individuals act, including recognition of typing patterns, mouse and finger movements, website and social media engagement patterns, walking gait, and other gestures. Some of these behavioral identifiers can be used to provide continuous authentication instead of a single one-off authentication check. While it remains a newer method with lower reliability ratings, it has the potential to grow alongside other improvements in biometric technology.
Advantages of biometrics :
- hard to fake or steal, unlike passwords;
- easy and convenient to use;
- generally, the same over the course of a user’s life;
- non-transferable;
- Efficient because templates take up less storage.
Disadvantages of biometrics:
- It is costly to get a biometric system up and running.
- If the system fails to capture all of the biometric data, it can lead to failure in identifying a user.
- Databases holding biometric data can still be hacked.
- Errors such as false rejects and false accepts can still happen.
- If a user gets injured, then a biometric authentication system may not work — for example, if a user burns their hand, then a fingerprint scanner may not be able to identify them.