Biometrics for Authentication Past - Present and Future

Question: Discuss about theBiometrics for Authenticationfor Past, Present and Future. Answer: Forum Summary The research explores biometric authentication techniques, past, present and the future of biometric security. In 14th Century, Chinese merchants used to take fingerprints of children for identification. By 1890, Bertillonage method was used which involved exploration of body mechanics for identification of criminals(Bhattacharyya, Ranjan, A, Choi, 2009). In 1960s and 1970s, the technology went beyond fingerprinting and signature biometric authentication procedures were utilized for military. Today, biometric solutions are growing and biometric laws, regulations and industry standards are being developed. In the modern scenario, biometric devices measure physiological characteristics like fingerprints, faces, hand geometry, and iris and behavioural characteristics like signatures, keystrokes and voice. A new trend has also been observed in the field is cognitive biometrics which involves integration of databases with human perception. Various biometric techniques that are used in present were explored in the paper and these included fingerprinting, face recognition, IRIS technology, hand geometry, retina geometry, speaker recognition, signature verification, and other techniques like palmprint, hand vein, DNA, thermal imaging, ear shape, body odour, keystroke dynamics, and fingernail bed(Wayma, Jain, Maltoni, Maio, 2000). Applications of biometric solutions were identified in the research and these included network access, data protection, transaction security, web security, ecommerce, egovernment, electronic banking, financial transaction, retail sales, social services, health, law enforcement, POS, digital rights management and so on(Ahmad, Ali, Azizun, Adnan, 2012). Further, the paper highlighted the importance of understand the levels of security that is provided by biometric solutions and certain factors that could be used for evaluation of biometric solutions were discussed such as False Accept Rate (FAR), False Reject Rate (FRR), Relative Opening Characteristics (ROC), Equal Error Rate (ERR), Failure to Enrol Rate (FER), Failure to Capture Rate (FCR) and Template Capacity. Based on these evaluating measures, various biometric technologies were evaluated. The research discovered biometric as a strong security solution that worked well but there was still a need realized on improvement of security of biometric solutions(Jain, Nandakumar, Nagar, 2008). Uncovered Issues The paper covered various biometric technologies that exist today but did not explore the future trends and potential applications of biometric solutions such as use of biometric authentication for documents, access and attendance control, travel control, financial applications, remote voice authorization, automatic working devices, and action control(Adkins, 2007). Moreover, the paper did not cover the technologies that could be used in the field of biometric security such as optical technologies, acoustic technologies, microwaves, capacitive sensors, pressure sensors, particle rays, magnetic fields, electric fields, and chemical emissions that are likely to be used in near future for biometric authentication. The research could have explored newer trends that are likely to be seen in the field of biometric authentication such as acoustic holography, multimodal biometric, biometric devices, THz electromagnetic waves technique and so on(Bicz, 2006). Another area of biometric authentication was missing in the research which is understanding performance of the solutions in terms of various parameters like accuracy, cost, integrity, privacy, ease of use and deployment(Pankanti, Bolle, Jain, 2000). The research did not cover the verification mechanisms that could be used in biometric devices including identification, authentication, and verification. A verification system could have been covered for explaining how biometric systems work including information about getting identity, recording or checking records, extracting feature vector, authorizing user, configuring interface, comparing biometric records with live records, and clearing memory for security. The research could have also explored various functions and components of a biometric system such as capture device, policy manager, storage, portal, auditing, and transmission(COmmon Criteria, Federal Ministry of the Interior ). The research could also cover details of how biometric authentication helped securing systems in the cases of specific threats like bruteforce, asset modification attack, code reproduction, residual and so on. The security policies that are required to be used by organizations to ensure maximum level of security is obtained using biometric authentication could also have been covered in the research. Impact An understanding of various information related to biometric solutions such as how biometric solutions work, how they help in preventing attacks, how they can be evaluated, verification mechanism they can use and so on would be useful as biometric solutions are being increasingly used today and in the near future, the applications areas are likely to only grow taking more parts of lives of humans. In such cases, the security of biometric solutions has to be explored on priority such that biometric authentication does not fail or get exposed to attacks causing harm to a huge number of people using biometrics. Lessons Learnt Certain lessons were learnt from this exploration of literature on biometric authentication including: Biometric solutions are used by organizations for securing their networks and systems and in near future, the applications are likely to grow fast. Although biometric devices are used for security but there still are threats that can actually affect the biometric security systems and thus, it is important to understand the level at which biometric solutions are capable of providing security. Conclusion The report explored the area of biometric authentication by considering and assessing a research report on past, present and future of biometric authentication solutions. It was found that the selected research only covered the basics of biometric security including methods used for authentication, application of biometrics and evaluation parameters. The literature covered largely lacked in exploring various other areas like verification process, security against specific types of attacks, performance parameters, future technologies, and so on. References Adkins, L. D. (2007). Biometrics: Weighing Convenience and National Security against Your Privacy. Michigan Telecommunications and Technology Law Review, 541-555. Ahmad, S. M., Ali, B. M., Azizun, W., Adnan, W. (2012). Technical Issues And Challenges Of Biometric Applications As Access Control Tools Of Information Security. International Journal of Innovative, 79837999. Bhattacharyya, D., Ranjan, R., A, F. A., Choi, M. (2009). Biometric Authentication: A Review . International Journal of u- and e- Service, Science and Technology, 13-28. Bicz, W. (2006). Future of biometrics . OPTEL. COmmon Criteria. (Federal Ministry of the Interior ). Common Criteria Protection Profile Biometric Verification Mechanisms . Bundesamt fr Sicherheit in der Informationstechnik , 2-64. Jain, A. K., Nandakumar, K., Nagar, A. (2008). Biometric Template Security. EURASIP Journal on Advances in Signal Processing, 1-17. Pankanti, S., Bolle, R. M., Jain, A. (2000). Biometrics: The Future of Identification. CSE. Wayma, J., Jain, A., Maltoni, D., Maio, D. (2000). An Introduction to Biometric Authentication Systems. Springer.