Who's Who? Challenges in Biometric Authentication

A wide variety of systems require reliable personal recognition schemes to either confirm or determine the identity of an individual requesting their services. The purpose of such schemes is to ensure that only a legitimate user, and not anyone else, accesses the rendered services. Examples of such applications include secure access to buildings, computer systems, laptops, cellular phones and ATMs. In the absence of robust personal recognition schemes, these systems are vulnerable to the wiles of an impostor. Biometric recognition, or simply biometrics, refers to the automatic recognition of individuals based on their physiological and/or behavioral characteristics. By using biometrics it is possible to confirm or establish an individual’s identity based on “who she is”, rather than by “what she possesses” (e.g., an ID card) or “what she remembers” (e.g., a password). Current biometric systems make use of fingerprints, hand geometry, iris, retina, face, hand vein, facial thermograms, signature, voice characteristics, palmprint, gait, etc. to establish a person’s identity [1]. Besides bolstering security and discouraging identity fraud, biometric systems also introduce an aspect of user convenience that may not be possible using traditional security techniques. For example, they alleviate the need for a user to “remember” the PINS and passwords associated with multiple applications.