15 November 2007

Biometric identification

By Jim Pinto

Biometrics refers to the automatic identification or identity verification of living persons using their enduring physical or behavioral characteristics. Many body parts, personal characteristics, and imaging methods have been suggested and used for biometric systems: fingers, hands, feet, faces, eyes, ears, teeth, veins, voices, signatures, typing styles, gaits, and odors.

Biometrics will have a significant impact on airport security. As people pass through the airport screening process, and even as they board the aircraft, their faces, facial expressions, behavior, and general demeanor can undergo analysis.

Biometrics is, at the very least, a practical supporting mechanism for hijacker detection. Questionable people can be identified accurately, in real time. Once selected, authorities can interview and search the suspect, which would eliminate the innocent. Certainly, no one would mind the additional level of security screening.

Thought applications in airport screening are immediately evident, Biometrics responds to many other significant existing and emerging needs. In society today, many daily actions require identification of the people who conduct them. This need will only continue to grow as more access through the Internet, more methods of conducting business and facilitating human interaction, and more devices that enable this whole process proliferate.

Biometric-based authentication applications include workstation, network, and domain access, single sign-on, application logon, data protection, remote access to resources, transaction security, and web security. Trust in these electronic transactions is essential to the healthy growth of the global economy.

Utilized alone or integrated with other technologies such as smart cards, encryption keys, and digital signatures, biometrics technology is set to pervade nearly all aspects of the economy and our daily lives. Utilizing biometrics for personal authentication is becoming convenient and considerably more accurate than current methods (such as the utilization of passwords or PINs). This is because biometrics links the event to a particular individual (a password or token may be used by someone other than the authorized user), is convenient (nothing to carry or remember), accurate (it provides for positive authentication), can provide an audit trail, and is becoming socially acceptable and cost effective.

Related links:

• Introduction to Biometrics:
  http://www.biometrics.org/html/introduction.html
• New tool to analyze expressions:
  http://www.hhmi.org/bulletin/may2001/faces/index.html
• Biometrics: Who’s Watching You?
  http://www.eff.org/wp/biometrics-whos-watching-you
• Dept. of Defense Biometrics:
  http://www.biometrics.dod.mil/

Behind the byline

Jim Pinto is an industry analyst and founder of Action Instruments. You can e-mail him at jim@jimpinto.com or view his writings at www.JimPinto.com. Read the Table of Contents of his book, Pinto’s Points, at www.jimpinto.com/writings/points.html.