ZDNet Australia looks at some of the biometrics technologies currently available and examines how they can protect your valuable network.
Passwords are a fact of life; we need them when we carry out an EFT-POS purchase, activate our home alarm system, log in to the Internet at home, log in to carry out some Internet banking, log into our PC at work, and the list goes on. And, if like me, you try and rationalise your passwords it does make things a little easier. But security is a big issue so your passwords at work for example probably expire after 30 or 90 days typically and generally you are not permitted to use the same password twice, meaning you have to create and memorise a new one each time.
Because most of us have a brain stuffed with passwords there is the temptation to put them somewhere in case we forget them. And, while I would argue that storing all the passwords in your organiser protected by a single password you must not forget is certainly acceptable, a post-it note with the password stuck to your monitor is not! And believe me I have seen people do this.
Another problem with passwords is that they are "contagious", that is you can pass them on to co-workers. It is not uncommon for Harry to forget his password for example and ask Sally for hers so he can logon and work until he can arrange with the system administrator for a new password. Or another very common scenario, you are not at the office and a co-worker desperately needs to get a report from your PC, what do you do? Generally you give them your password so they can logon and retrieve the report, and hopefully remember to change your password the next day.
In essence, a lot of the time password secu-rity is not all its cracked up to be. The next step is biometric security where one of your "unique" physical characteristics becomes your password.
Biometrics includes fingerprint, hand and fin-ger geometry, voice patterns, facial recognition, handwriting, iris, and retinal scans. Without resorting to gruesome Hannibal Lecter type scenarios, it is quite difficult to gain access to a fingerprint or retinal scanning biometric system without your physical presence. In any case, many biometric systems are designed to be able to tell the difference between a severed body part and one that is attached.
The accuracy of the various biometric meth-ods varies. Facial recognition, for example, can be fooled by "identical" twins but the twins will not have identical fingerprints or iris patterns. So how does a biometric system work? Typically it involves the following steps for the capture or enrolment process:
- Capture the particular biometric.
- Process the biometric and store the unique data in a biometric template. The data can be stored in a repository or on a smart card for example, usually in a heavily encrypted format.
Identification or verification is then carried out by:
- Scanning the individual for the chosen bio-metric.
- Processing the biometric and extracting the individual's biometric template.
- Comparing the biometric template with those in the database or on the smart card to obtain a match.
It might be advantageous to cover the rel-evant biometric technologies in more detail.
i think it is a great system,currently in my fourth year at university stydying graphic design i have decided to base one of my project briefs on retina scanning as i believe it will ,in the future be common practice.i would be pleased if you could send me any information on this subject
like diagrams,plans,how it works etc.
thank you