The history of biometrics can be traced back to the nineteenth century when law enforcement agencies started using fingerprint identification technology to track criminals. The hardware and software advancements along with the ever increasing usage of the internet have helped the adoption of these technologies in various sectors. Today these technologies can be seen in many applications that we use and it is quickly becoming a part of our everyday life. A number of recent research reports also suggest that biometrics is on a sharp growth curve and this rise can be attributed largely to the fact that most mobile users are now comfortable with using tools such as fingerprint identification for accessing their devices. Juniper Research reported that an estimated 770 million biometric authentication applications will be downloaded every year by 2019. Juniper study also points out that the overwhelming majority of these apps will be using fingerprint authentication.
Biometrics can also play a huge role in corporate security programs as it can prove employee’s identity with greater level of assurance than the conventional smart cards or passwords. With these technologies, organizations can be confident that the person accessing their premises and secure areas are not only those individuals holding proper credentials but in fact those persons who have been actually granted access. As such technologies are based on physiological or behavioural characteristics, they are extremely difficult to fake and also the information collected is unique to each individual and rarely changes over a period of time. Nowadays, these technologies are used to facilitate both physical and virtual access. For example, physical access can include access to certain parts or restricted areas within an enterprise premise and virtual access could include access to the selected sites on a network.
Biological characteristics such as fingerprint, face, iris etc. have proved to very helpful in the evolution of biometric technologies. Nowadays these identification capabilities are becoming a standard on many devices due to the added security and convenience they provide in our day-to-day transactions. We will look at some applications that use this technology to increase everyday security.
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Providing access to buildings and cars
Security breaches and unauthorized access to high security facilities has prompted organizations look for access solutions that can provide guaranteed accuracy and security. By implementing biometric systems such as fingerprint identification, organizations are able to manage member information in a more secure and orderly manner. High security facilities also utilize this technology to ensure that only authorized personnel have access. Automobile industry has also deployed this technology for access control. Some reports suggest that biometrics is being utilized by more than 2 million cars in the UK. The examples of its implementation in cars may include voice recognition when using the car’s entertainment system to unlocking the device itself.
Financial organizations are looking for better authentication techniques like biometrics to combat credit card frauds and other online security threats.
With the exponential growth of electronic commerce and online businesses, monetary transactions through the internet also have increased. However, current authentication methodologies such as passwords or token based systems prove insufficient to combat credit card frauds and other online security threats. Therefore government and companies are looking for better authentication techniques and biometrics can play a very important role. Its adoption to secure online transactions can provide better reliability as the authentication factor is something what the user is as opposed to what he knows or what he has. The user now authenticates financial transactions using a biometric identifier such as fingerprint. Unlike passwords, it links the user to his action and is able to provide a concrete audit trail. Therefore, it reduces the chances of identity theft and fraudulent online transactions.
Thus it is increasingly becoming prominent in our daily lives right from ensuring protection against identity theft to providing secured access to cars, offices, computers and mobile phones.
Border control and airport security
This technology has added convenience and security for travellers. It has helped to boost international travel and trade globally. The time-consuming and tedious process of manual traveller verification by border security officials have been replaced with efficient and fast biometric systems. Many countries around the world have deployed these identification systems at border security and control which have immensely helped in quick and accurate identification of both domestic and international travellers. The border security applications that have deployed these systems include immigration, electronic passports and national databases. The implementation of these biometric border control systems assure that no inadmissible person can pass through unidentified at any of the border control posts. Thus we see that the deployment of this technology for border control management closes any security loopholes thereby increasing the security of both individuals and countries.