1. Module 14: Biometrics Introduction and Definitions The Biometrics Authentication Process Biometric System Components The Future of Biometrics J. M. Kizza - Ethical And Social Issues1

2. Introduction A biometric is a physical or psychological trait that can be measured, recorded, and quantified. Such traits are abundant in the human body and in access control are used to do a biometric enrollment and stored in a database. Biometric technology, based on human attributes, is perhaps one of the safest and most reliable and most secure form of access control so far in use. Access control technologies are based on three axioms: ◦ Something you know – which includes all passwords and pass phrases ◦ Something you have – which include all physical security passes like pass cards, access cards, and all sorts of access cards. ◦ Something you are – which includes all human attributes. This group is where biometrics fall. J. M. Kizza - Ethical And Social Issues2

3. The Biometrics Authentication Process Key steps for a biometric authentication process are: ◦ Image capture – using a biometric reader or scanner ◦ Image recognition – based on a standard biometric algorithm ◦ Template creation - again using a standard biometric algorithm and extracted features ◦ Matching of the templates – both the live and stored templates of the individual are compared for a match using a standard biometric algorithm. J. M. Kizza - Ethical And Social Issues3

4. A standard biometric authentication comprises the following functional units: ◦ Sensor device a reader or scanner to acquire the biometric raw data from the individual. The reader or scanner can capture images from a fingerprint, a face, an iris, or a sound from a microphone. Readers or scanners at this stage may do some limited preprocessing without introducing foreign information or creating redundancy ◦ Feature extraction to extract traits used in the creation of the template ◦ Matcher to compare the live template with the stored reference template ◦ Reference archive for storing the biometric reference templates J. M. Kizza - Ethical And Social Issues4

5. Biometric System Components The components of a biometric system are: ◦ Data Acquisition ◦ Enrolments ◦ Signal Processing ◦ Decision Policy J. M. Kizza - Ethical And Social Issues5

6. Types of Biometric Technologies Biometric technologies confirm a person's identity by scanning physical characteristics. These traits include: ◦ Finger Biometrics - involves taking an individual’s fingerprints ◦ Hand Geometry -Hand features are extracted and taken as the defining feature vector of the user's hand ◦ Face Biometrics – are distinctive features of the subject’s face ◦ Voice Biometrics - individual voice components called phonemes. ◦ Handwriting Analysis - a person's specific features from his/her handwriting J. M. Kizza - Ethical And Social Issues6

7. ◦ Iris Biometrics - the features that exist in the colored tissue surrounding the pupil of the subject’s eye. ◦ Retina - unique pattern of blood vessels with distinctive traits in a human eye ◦ J. M. Kizza - Ethical And Social Issues7

8. Biometric Performance The measure of performance of a biometric is based on three concepts: ◦ false accept rate (FAR) ◦ false non match or reject rate (FRR), ◦ failure to enroll rate (FTE or FER). Biometric performance is commonly the rate at which both accept and reject errors are equal. This rate is referred to as the equal error rate (EER). We want EER to be as low as possible for a good biometric algorithm J. M. Kizza - Ethical And Social Issues8

9. The Future of Biometrics With increasing miniaturization, price reduction, easy of use, less intrusive, and more invasiveness, the future of biometric technology seem bright than ever before. J. M. Kizza - Ethical And Social Issues9