Are Biometric Systems Useful For Authentication?

Elevating automation and maturation of modern technological systems, such as cellular phones and internet, have led users to the prevailing use of technical ways instead of human beings for acquiring authentication. Personal identity has evolved to the ability of private PIN's and passwords. Passwords are regularly used in things such as cellular phones, ATM's, personal computers or access to the internet. But, there is a problem with using the system of passwords for security reasons.

For making the password non-accessible to other individuals, it has to be unique, not present in the dictionary and has to include symbols like %, #, or @. Furthermore, for security resolves, a password has to be not written, never given access to other people, and has to be altered at least after every three months. People nowadays, use as enormous amounts of passwords and it becomes troublesome for remembering these. While the passwords are considered machine friendly, they are for from being user friendly.

There is an answer that brings back the ways of nature. For identifying an individual, human beings contradistinguish amongst physical features such as facial composition or voice. Biometrics, which is the science concerned with the compiling and measuring of contrasting physical aspects, now discerns many characteristics as perfect for the distinct recognition of an identical twin too. Examples comprise the iris, the fingerprint, and also the structure of the veins. For performing the task of recognition at the human brain level (presuming the brain only uses an individualistic biometric feature), 100 million calculations per second will be necessitated. Recently, standard PCs have attained this acceleration, and it is also seen that the sensors needed to evaluate characteristics are getting more affordable. Therefore, the moment has arrived for complementing the password with more consumer friendly solutions - Biometric authentications.

There are various ways by which biometric verifications are done. Some of them are mentioned below.

Finger Identifications

The ridges of fingerprints are formed in the uterus just at the completion of four months of development of the fetus. The fingerprints thus formed are like pictures present on a balloon's surface. The fingers of a person get large with increasing age, but, the relation between the fingerprint ridges is constant throughout. This is why fingerprint identifications are considered trustworthy.

Authentication of the palm vein

The authentication of the palm veins is a system in which infrared beams are used for penetrating the hands of the users while waving them over the authentication systems. The palm veins get returned back in the form of black lines. The complex nature of the vein pattern makes this system accurate. As the veins are present inside the body of a person, this system is difficult to counterfeit.

The retina scans

The method of scanning the retina involves analyzing capillary blood vessels which are present in the eye. This pattern does not change throughout the lifespan. A light of low intensity is used for taking the images of the patterns of blood vessels. It is a very reliable method of identification used by biometrics.

Iris scans

Scanning the iris is a method in which the freckles, rings and the furrows present in the ring which fences the pupils of the eyes are scanned. The method involves the use of close to 200 points for comparing and is very reliable.

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