Biometric Authentication, an Overview of the Telecom System Security - Assignment Example

?DQWeek 5 By DQ1: Biometric Authentication Will biometric authentication methods be useful in the future? What kind of attacks could be mounted in practice? The biometric authentication is one of the very useful authentication techniques. It encompasses a wide variety of techniques for recognizing people by identifying one or more physicals features. Without a doubt, it is one of the future technologies that will offer a great deal of support in all the areas of life (Fustier & Burger, 2005). In addition, various researches show that the biometric authentication technology and methods will certainly be useful in the future. In fact, it is expected that this technology will become more persistent in every business as well as personal lives. At the present, the implementation of biometric authentication technology can be seen all around our lives for example at homes where normally an active biometric authentication sensor is used. When children return home and make use of the biometric sensor after playing in the mud and dirt whole day. In this scenario, this sensor can detect the dirt in hidden areas of the body to suggest much better wash. In the future, the use of biometric authentication sensor can be expected for car system where a family hoping to go anywhere. In this scenario, children will not be able to ignite the car without parents’ authentication to start the car (Reid, 2003; Kaschte, 2005). There might be some disadvantages of this technology but its advantages are so important and people want to benefit from them that the disadvantages will be more and more reduced in the future. In short, it can be said that the applications of biometric authentication technology will increase to a greater extent in the future. In fact, this technology will be supported among a variety of equipment by the some enhancement of the technologies and the decrease in the prices for software and hardware. In the future, it is expected that the biometric authentication will be used in various other areas of life such as ATMs, PDAs, access to Personal Computers and mobile phones, access to cars and buildings, DRM systems and many more we cannot even imagine (Kaschte, 2005; Bhattacharyya et al., 2009). From the above discussion it has been clear that the future of biometric authentication technology is bright but a number of security attacks on biometric authentication technology would also be increased in the future. It is possible that in future new and more sophisticated techniques emerge for breaking in biometric authentication systems. It is expected that in the future there will emerge a number of techniques that can be used to evade this technology (Waqas, 2009; Riha & Matyas, 2000). Moreover, some researches show that biometric systems are not ideal for security and as a result sometimes serious issues and errors can occur. In fact, with this technology it is possible that an authorized individual can be rejected by the system or that a non-authorized individual can be able to get authentication into the system. In the future, a variety of vulnerability techniques can be generated for biometric authenticated systems that can include fraud by incorporating some fooling and fraudulent methods (Waqas, 2009; Riha & Matyas, 2000).. Furthermore, another major issue with biometric authentication system is lack of support for platforms and systems. In fact, this kind of support is extremely limited and current standards are not properly followed. In this scenario, there can emerge a number of security attacks. In addition, it can lead to a great deal drastic situation where an attacker can smash the overall security of the system (Waqas, 2009; Riha & Matyas, 2000). DQ2: Sec Products Find a commercial or shareware product related to this weeks topic, describe how it works, and discuss its security. This section presents an overview of the telecom system security. For telecom system security the protection of telecommunications applications and systems is a significant scenario for numerous causes. Initially, a number of distributed systems completely depend on the basic mobile or fixed phone network in a way that is normally not understandable. In this scenario, keeping the history of safety malfunctions in the telecoms industry is useful. In the past, hasty attacks were performed on phone corporations through devotees or phone phreaks in an attempt to obtain free phone calls. After that telephone systems’ vulnerabilities started to be broken by hackers and spammers to avoid police wiretapping. Additionally, a lot of companies also offered premium rate calls those were offered to motive for large scale attacks and frauds. After sometime telecoms marketplaces were liberalized, a number of telecom businesses initiated security based attacks on other’s clients, as well as a number of telecom corporations have yet performed such security attacks against each other (Anderson, n.d; Douligeris & Kotzanikolaou, 2005). While talking about commercial or shareware product related telecom system security applications one of the basic solutions is the Firewall. In case of internet connection, a firewall is the basic tool to be installed on customary voice communications systems. Additionally, a telecom firewall security solution is a security structure that is driven through a security strategy describing whether to permit or reject certain phone calls. Though, such firewall system clearly passes permitted calls from their source to destination, however obviously terminates prohibited calls. In order to achieve high performance on the customary voice based communication network, the telecom voice firewalls have to be extremely dependable and incorporate no obvious latency to the voice and network traffic (Collier, 2004; Douligeris & Kotzanikolaou, 2005). In addition, there is another important technology based solution that is called Telecom VPNs. It is probable to snoop on network communication calls through PSTN. The suggested security management solution implants encryption facility in the telecom safety device. Such arrangement will offer a great deal of security and privacy of network calls (Collier, 2004; Douligeris & Kotzanikolaou, 2005). Another technology based solution is the telecom intrusion detection and prevention systems. This is also called IDS that checks and monitors network traffic for offensive call patterns, comprising tolls fraud, war dialing and password guessing. In this scenario war dialing outlines are observed when a network attacker places short calls to various numbers inside the corporation in a search for network modems. In addition, toll-fraud models are observed when there is a strange or illegal usage of long-distance network service, frequently from or to a new source as well as destination. Additionally, the password estimation patterns are observed when a network security attacker tries to get access to an official modem; however the system deletes the attacker’s link after a small time period for the reason that of numerous failed password efforts (Collier, 2004). References Anderson, R., n.d. Telecom System Security. [Online] Available at: http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~rja14/Papers/SE-17.pdf [Accessed 01 August 2012]. Bhattacharyya, D., Ranjan, R., A, F.A. & Choi, M., 2009. Biometric Authentication: A Review. International Journal of u- and e- Service, Science and Technology, 2(3), pp.13-28. Collier, M.D., 2004. Enterprise Telecom Security Solutions. [Online] Available at: http://download.securelogix.com/library/Enterprise_Telecom_Security_Solutions_Draft_10-12-04.pdf [Accessed 31 July 2012]. Douligeris, C. & Kotzanikolaou, P., 2005. Network Security. [Online] Available at: http://www.eolss.net/Sample-Chapters/C05/E6-108-21-00.pdf [Accessed 01 August 2012]. Fustier, A. & Burger, V., 2005. Internet Security and Privacy. [Online] Available at: http://web.it.kth.se/~johanmon/attic/2g1704/reports/biometrics.pdf [Accessed 01 August 2012]. Kaschte, B., 2005. Biometric authentication systems today and in the future. [Online] Available at: http://www.cs.auckland.ac.nz/courses/compsci725s2c/archive/termpapers/bkaschte.pdf [Accessed 02 August 2012]. Reid, P., 2003. Biometrics for Network Security. London: Prentice Hall. Riha, Z. & Matyas, V., 2000. Biometric Authentication Systems. [Online] Available at: http://www.fi.muni.cz/reports/files/older/FIMU-RS-2000-08.pdf [Accessed 30 July 2012]. Waqas, 2009. Future of Biometric Authentication Methods. [Online] Available at: http://www.pmbatch.com/blog/future-biometric-authentication-methods/ [Accessed 30 July 2012]. Read More