ABSTRACT

On
Biometrics for Secure Identity
Verification

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 the rendered services are accessed only by a legitimate user, and not anyone
else. 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). Biometrics is the study of distinguishable physical, biological or behavioral
characteristics used for the identification of humans and animals. Physical characteristics include
items such as fingerprints, hand geometry, iris or retina patterns, and facial features. Biological
characteristics would include DNA and specific fluid or tissue chemistries. Behavioral
characteristics include things such as a signature, voice and speech patterns. Both behavioral and
physical characteristics can change over time, but usually, physical features have been found to
be more reliable, changing only in the long term.
In the simplest terms, biometrics technologies rely on measuring one or more of these
distinguishable characteristics and determining if they belong to an individual whose
Characteristics have been previously stored in a database. More specifically, biometrics is
defined as the automatic identification or identity verification of an individual using computer
technology in a noninvasive way to match patterns of live individuals in real time against
enrolled records.