The Advantages And Disadvantages Of Biometric Authentication Methods Impact Enterprise Security

It is important to note that the main applications of biometrics are utilized for preventing fraud and ensuring security. The use of biometrics has increased tremendously but so has social, ethical, privacy, practical and even political issues associated with it (Duquenoy, Jones & Blundell, 2008). Following is the detail regarding its ethical and privacy issue implications.

The thing with biometrics is that it works great only if the verifier can verify two things: Firstly, that the biometric to be used has come from the intended person at the time of verification, and Secondly, which the biometric should match with the master biometric entry in the file database. If the system can't do that, it can't work. Biometrics are good in uniquely identifying the people, butat the same time they are not secrets and cannot be trusted [1].

The physical protection of information, personnel, software, buildings and other material resources are the first thing that should be assessed when looking into security, obviously there are unavoidable disasters such as natural disasters, man-made disasters and loss of electricity, air or water but most issues are preventable, by monitoring who has access to what and how much access they have, by locking rooms and PC’s, using person specific swipe cards, bolting computers to desks, having effective CCTV in place, and by having effective monitoring tools an IT team can keep a close eye on valuable data and prevent risks. Electronic security systems are designed to protect against unwanted personnel and they provide free roaming for wanted personnel. An electronic security system is a series of biometric locks, or a single biometric lock. A biometric lock is a system that can provide control of entry (or exit) within a designated area by the use of an electronic locking facility. The most common biometric lock is a pin pad system which is a keypad that requires the exact combinations of keys to open the lock, the keys are generally numbers but can be emphasised as letters, shapes, or sounds. Secondly and commonly are swipe cards which are encoded cards which hold information on the user, there is normally a swipe slot to enter a facility that have chosen to

Biometrics is a method of identifying an individual based on characteristics that they possess, typically physiological features such as a fingerprint, hand, iris, retina, face, voice, and even DNA. Some methods of biometrics security even use multiple physiological features or multimodal biometrics to provide superior security than a single form of biometrics can provide. Why are biometrics important in the field of information security? Biometrics provide a remarkable amount of security for information because biometrics are unique to each person, and thus cannot be lost, copied, or shared with another individual. This security allows for biometrics to provide a means to reliability authenticate personnel. The importance of biometrics can be further divided into the history of biometrics and why it was devised, past implementations of biometrics, current implementations of biometrics, and future implementations of biometrics.

For over a century fingerprints have been one of the most used tools of forensic science. Fingerprints have been used to identify criminals of small crimes

Biometric Authentication refers to the usage of software that looks for physical markers to allow access to a system. Some of the most commonly used physical markers are fingerprints, face-recognition, voice-recognition, and iris-recognition (Williams & Sawyer, 2015). As no two humans are exactly alike biometics are less likely to be hacked, although it is not impossible.

The use of fingerprinting as a means of identification was born out of the need of law enforcement officials to have permanent records that could determine if a convict had been previously arrested or imprisoned. Before the advent of fingerprinting, law enforcement used a number of different methods to try to accomplish this. Ancient civilizations would tattoo or physically maim prisoners. In more recent times, daguerreotyping (that is, photographing) was used, but proved to be less than reliable, because people had the ability to dramatically alter their appearance (Skopitz). As a result, this method too, became obsolete with the discovery of fingerprinting, an absolutely infallible

This report started with a motivational empirical study of the usability, security, and privacy of enhanced fingerprint authentication as compared to password-based authentication. This study revealed that the password-based authentication lacks usability and security, while the privacy-enhanced fingerprint authentication is more usable than password-based authentication. However fingerprint data on the cloud poses a greater likelihood for attacks. A risk assessment was conducted to evaluate the adequacy of controls available to mitigate the risks. Based on a threshold set for the residual risk, a roadmap was established to close the gap on the lack of controls.

The next step option to further prevent this security will involve restricting access to data by requiring a password, personal identification numbers, or a callback procedure. This approach will restrict logon time to a maximum of 2 minutes; if the computer goes idle for 2 minutes, a login password will be required to gain access to the system. The only problem with previous approach will the redundant need to frequently reenter password, to alleviate this problem associated with redundant authentication, the organization can adopt the use of a biometric method of authentication, for example, the use iris scanner, fingerprint, or an electronic signature (Joos et al, 2010).

We live in a world today, in which technology moves at a very rapid pace. Many of these technological advances can be used to make our everyday lives easier and safer. One of these new technologies is Biometrics. Biometrics is the process of measuring a person’s physical properties. This would include measuring things like fingerprints, retinas, odor, vein structure on the back of the hand and many other things. Biometrics is a very important topic because it would create better security precautions for certain places that need to be secure. Biometrics will make our society safer by only allowing authorized people out of secure facilities and by keeping the unauthorized people out. Throughout the rest of this

“Fingerprint recognition is one of the divorce inference using the impressions made by the minute ridge formations or patterns found on the fingertips. No two people have exactly the same arrangement of the ridge patterns, and the remaining patterns of any one individual unchanged. Fingerprints infallible provide a means of personal identification. Other personal characteristics may change, but not fingerprints”. (1)

Fingerprinting is used for many things, such as a robbery, or at a crime scene. Fingerprints were first discovered in 1870 by Alphonse Bertillon, who was a French anthropologist. In 1892, Juan Vucetich had made the first criminal report using a fingerprint. In 1905 America used fingerprints for identification. When America started using fingerprints for identification they had to match the fingerprints manually when needed. When technology was able to enter fingerprints, and match them with anonymous ones, it helped identification immensely.

According to Jain Anil, fingerprint-based identification is the oldest method which has been successfully used in numerous applications and though Bertillon’s anthropometry raised many valid points in forensic science, it was discarded and replaced by the fingerprint identification method after Bertillon’s death 1914.

One of the most important ways that biometric technology is impacting security lies within the confines of computer information systems. The government, the military, and large corporations need to have complete assurance that the data and information stored on their networks and databases are only available to users who have been authorized to view such material.

Biometric technologies are getting better and finely tuned. The rate of false readings and errors has sharply fallen. However it still requires careful consideration and planning to implement a biometric identification system. They are most costly and complicated to implement as compared with other authentication systems. A proper evaluation of the system is important before purchasing any biometric system. A thorough risk analysis is necessary. In many cases biometrics may be overkill. Biometrics must be used if there is high level of risk involved. Customer acceptance is also important when logging on to company websites. Home users might not be ready to install biometrics on home computers for online banking.