Access control system with hand geometry verification and smart cards

The authors define an access control system that includes the uniqueness of biometric verification, as well as the storage security and processing capabilities of smart cards. The biometric technique chosen is hand geometry, which is considered as low/medium security (there are other much more secure methods, such as fingerprint, iris or retina), easy usage, high user high acceptance, fast processing and medium cost. Also, the small template size needed is advantageous for the storage and processing capabilities required. But the innovation in the system proposed is that the smart card not only stores the user's template, but also performs the whole verification process with the features set by the terminal to the card. With this improvement, the security of the system has improved because the template is never extracted from the card, avoiding duplication of such data. The specifications for the enrollment process are also presented as well as the applications for which this new system is recommended.