Biometrics

Biometrics is a technology used to uniquely identify a person by means of some biological triats(signs). Two types of traits can be used to uniquely identify a person. First one is physiological traits and another is behavioral traits. Physiological traits include facial patterns, iris patterns, retina patterns, finger prints etc. Behavioral traits include voice patterns,signatures etc. The common working of a biometric system will be like the following.

The unique identication data will be taken and one algorithm will be applied to convert it in to a unique code and then stored into database. During the tme of identification, the unique feature from the person will be taken and a code is generated from that data using the same algorithm. Then the new record will be matched with the existings codes in the database and mostly matched record will be returned.

Upon identification of the user, the user will be allowed to do the intended activity. In a biometric system there are mainly two type of processes named enrollment and testing. During the enrollments phase the unique features will be taken from the users and stored in the database. During the testing phase a new record which needs identification will be matched with the existing data.


Biometrics can be used to do two types of functions.
1) verification
and
2) Identification.

Verification: A user will be verified in conjuction with the data stored in his smart card.Identification: A user will be identified using his biometric characteristics only withiut using any smart card etc.

Examples:Finger print:- already using by anticrime department to identify people from a crime spot.face recognition: using in research centers like NASA to allow entrance to secure rooms.USA is planning to digitize the facial patterns and fingerprints of the citizens in the passport. And the perons biometric characteristics will be compared with the data stored in the passport and visa.

Also USA alreaady made a database consisting of unique identification charecteristics of the in ternational criminals and they are develping scanners to find matching persons from a large crowd for egs in a remote location like airport.Iris and Retina patterns- ATMS. pbms: the scanners produce different outcomes. once a biometric system for egs: a iris recognition system is compromised, then the intruder will get full freedom to do activities such account transaction etc.