Biometrics Security

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Biometrics Security

What is Biometrics Security?

We have seen in James Bond movies that doors can be opened by giving voice copmmands. In some hollywood movies, you would have seen thumb impressions are used to open doors. All these are nothing but Biometrics.

Think of these scenarios.

You go to a bank to withdraw money. You fill up the withdrawal form, sign it and give it to the bank clerk. Your signature is used to verify your identity
You are shopping using your credit cards. While paying the photograph on the credit cards and the signature on the credit cards are used to verify your identity.
In big companies, all employees are issued an 'employee pass' with their photograph. People with these 'employee pass'es are allowed access to the company premises.

In all these above scenarios, signature and photographs are used to verify a person's identity. In reality any person can learn to use another person's signature. Worse still is they can replace your photograph with their own photograph on these cards. Therefore, these existing authentication methods are not secure enough.

Biometrics solves these above issues. Every person's face is unique. Each person's thumb impression is also unique. Everyone's voice is different from others. The eyes are also unique for every person. Therefore it makes sense to use these unique features of each person as a means of authentication.

Therefore for using computers, passwords are no longer required. To enter one's company , employee passes are no longer required. Your body is sufficient. Using any parts of your body the biometrics system can identify you. America, Canada and some european nations already use these security systems.

What is a Biometrics system?

There are two main modules in a biometrics system. "storing" and "comparing". The sytems must first store your information before it can use this stored information to compare and verify. The storing process however differs between different systems.

For instance, if the biometrics system uses thumb impression as the mode of verification, then your thumb impression will be first captured in film and stored in the biometrics database system. Instead of storing as it is, the system will compress and store it.

If for instance your face is used as the mode of verification, then your face will be photographed in different angles and stored in the biometrics database systems. The same goes for voice recording and eyes mode of verification.

Once this storing process is done, the 'comparing' process is done daily or as and when required. For example let us assume that your company uses finger print biometrics systems. When you come to office daily, there will be a finger print reader at the entrace. You will have to put your finger on this finger print reader which will capture your finger print and send to the biometrics system. The biometrics system will then 'compare' this finger print to the finger print that was previously stored in the database. If both of them match then you are authenticated.

Advantages of a biometrics system

The fact that you will have to personally be present in order to authenticate yourself is the advantage of this system. Finger print or retina of the eyes of one person do not match with anyone else's data in the database. Therefore there is abosolutely no chance of other people using your identity.

Disadvantages of a biometric system.


The finger print of those people working in Chemical industries are often affected. Therefore these companies should not use the finger print mode of authentication.
It is found that with age, the voice of a person differs. Also when the person has flu or throat infection the voice changes or if there there are too much noise in the environment this method maynot authenticate correctly. Therefore this method of verification is not workable all the time
For people affected with diabetes, the eyes get affected resulting in differences. 
Biometrics is an expensive security solution.