The Expertise of Biometrics and Its Classification - Assignment Example

Student’s Name] [Instructor’s Name] [Course Title] [Date] BIOMETRIC TECHNOLOGY INTRODUCTION Biometrics is a set of novel digital technologies intended to mechanize the progression of distinguishing individual human beings (Bolle, 2003). Biometric arrangements resolve individual identities in fraction by digitizing exclusive body elements, such as human faces, fingerprints and even irises. But these body parts single-handedly disclose little concerning distinctiveness. In order to recognize any human being, the digitized body should be associated to other data about character (Bolle, 2003). Biometrics utilize processor algorithms to decipher a picture captured of an existing person into a lesser quantity of information, occasionally called a digital pattern, which can then be contrasted adjacent to images stored in a file or to information accumulated on recognition documents. CLASSIFICATION OF BIOMETRICS Applications are characteristically separated into two unlike types: verification and identification. The first engages one-to-one assessment of biometric patterns in order to authenticate the individuality of an individual, responding the query, "Is this being who he/she states to be?" Identification grips one-to-many seeks against a catalog of images when the uniqueness of a human being is unidentified or in inquiry, answering the subject, "Who is this individual?" (Mahar, 2000) The numeral of evaluations the structure makes to confirm the individual tells apart identification from authentication. In the former, the computer might have to evaluate numerous fingerprints; in the latter merely one assessment between the tag and the individual presenting it. A biometric system that formulates thousands of assessments should have a higher precision rate than a scheme designed for a lone judgment. Thus, correctness represents one apprehension for possible users because dissimilar systems differ in their level of exactness. Authentication can be observed as the verification of persons. It entails knowing people. It can be used to recognize people by their user characteristics. Authentication is a solution for the need of certainty in the identity of the other party to a given transaction. Authentication in biometric is in fact gaining popularity in most of the countries today. It has wide applications which include governmental programs like national identity cards, the fight against terrorism and can also be used in visas. Lot of technologies are still been used to ensure that the correct identification on these individuals can also be used. Biometric technology has also led to robust solutions to many of the challenges in the biometric identification. Lot of research is still going on to search on how best to use the biometric technology on figure prints, facial, hand and iris recognition. Biometric is a measurement and can be used to uniquely identify and also confirm an individual identity. This looks similar to the DNA test but the trend is for biometrics to be used as a key or password to authenticate an individual identity. Biometric applications usually provide high levels of authentication and this is achieved when the identifier is obtained in the presence of a third party and this third party is to verify its authenticity. Biometric identification can be best suited for access to the individual devises. It is also less suited for authentication to the software systems over the open networks for example the internet. Authentication has been used by many countries to identify people. This is because people have different characteristics and no one individual is similar to the other. TYPES OF SYSTEMS A surplus of vendors at the present produces a diversity of biometric systems. The largest part widespread systems recognize or validate users by their body parts – such as fingerprints, eyes, hands, faces, or voices. Fingerprints Since it is an established fact that no two fingerprints are similar. For this rationale, rule enforcement and the judges distinguish fingerprints as exceptional individual identifiers. Most biometric fingerprint structures work by discovering the breaks and forks, furthermore known as minutiae, in the fingerprint ridges and translating data about their location into a sequence of statistics, like coordinate on a chart (Mahar, 2000). a number of systems employ additional information about the ridges or apertures of the skin membrane. Eyes Eye is the focus of scrutiny in two different types of biometric systems; one appears to scan at the prototype of veins in the retina, whereas the extra uses the outline of fibers, tissues, and rings that exist in the iris. Professionals consider that together these biometrics are as matchless as fingerprints, but their employment in identification requires the customary record of fingerprints (Mahar, 2000). The retinal structure, the initial system made-up, involves shining a beam into the eye at secure array to light up the retinal blueprint. As a consequence, it burdens the collaboration of the human being being checked. The retinal arrangement’s accurateness rate makes it suitable for high-security services; example can be of nuclear power plants. Users have started to articulate a fondness for the iris-based scheme. Although comparatively novel, it necessitates only that an individual look in the direction of a video camera working more than a few feet away (Mahar, 2000). In accumulation, neither the eye color nor even the person’s corrective lenses hinder with this system of biometric. Likewise, changes in the dimension of the iris in reaction to light do not impinge on the organization. In fact, a biometric classification can make use of the information that the iris acclimatizes to light to confirm that the eyeball belongs to a human being, not a snap (Mahar, 2000). However, these systems may not work well for blind citizens or individuals with any sort of eye injury/damage. Hands Biometric structures can employ the hand's distinctive, three-dimensional character, including the span, width, breadth, and curve of the fingers; veins; and additional features. Hand-geometry systems most regularly control admission to buildings (Bolle, 2003). A human being looking for entry places a hand in a apparatus that observes it with the help of a video camera and translates the video picture to statistics in a computer for evaluation with that individual’s prestored hand geometry (Mahar, 2000). Amendments in a person's fingers, for instance, big rings or distended fingers, might have an effect on hand recognition, and the scheme may not labor for citizens with hand diseases such as paralysis or shakes (Bolle, 2003). Ecological problems, such as heat or beam shining at the camera, also might impede the arrangement. Face These systems have observed speedy development. A video camera scrutinizes the face and accounts the array of features for evaluation with formerly traced facial images. Facial-recognition structures can mechanically scan people's faces as they emerge on TV or a closed-circuit camera checking a house or road (Mahar, 2000). One novel scheme uses the infrared warmth outline of the appearance as the biometric, which means the organization, works in the dim too. Persons who modify their looks strikingly, for instance, by rising beards, or who build abnormal facial expressions can perplex the arrangement(Bolle, 2003). The direction of a person's face in the direction of the camera also can manipulate accurateness. These structures might not be clever enough to differentiate twins. Voice To a restricted extent, voice or talking patterns can recognize natives. To exercise a voice-recognition structure, a human being must prerecord precise words on the scheme. afterwards, when the system wants to validate the person's individuality, it prompts the human being to speak one of these expressions(Bolle, 2003). A computer investigates the talking blueprint and tries to resolve if the voice goes with the prerecorded account. Voice recognition varies from speech identification, in which a PC tries to comprehend what a human being says. Voice recognition systems are prone to an array of issues. Human voice might modify for the reason of illness or tension, and women establish to be harder to make out than men (Mahar, 2000). A loud surroundings also can present a dilemma. A few Other Types A small number of accessible, but hardly ever used, biometric schemes are that which utilize palm prints, or even finger geometry. Research is underway to devise biometrics that would work on signatures, special odors, and ears, fret pores, the manner a human being types on a keyboard, and several other different body motions (Mahar, 2000). APPLICATION IN E-GOVERNMENT The likely uses of biometrics, on the other hand, expand further than preventing replica registrations for detection documents. Governments deploy biometrics for a wide variety of tasks such as voter enrollment; where biometrics could be utilized to maintain records on how persons have selected (Stapelton, 2000). In fact, electoral establishments could even ditch plans to employ digital fingerprinting equipment at polling locations, after disparagement that the equipment would allow regime officials to do just that. More generally, the biometrics manufacturing has been flaunting the enormous benefits of their recently commercialized goods for a wide variety of functions. Proponents of biometrics propose that they can bridle in electoral deception and make the voting procedure more self-governing, they also hypothesize that the technologies are accomplished of shielding monetary transactions, monitoring worker time and turnout, securing borders, protecting computer networks and services, and recognizing criminals and terrorists (Ashbourne, 2003). Accepting the grounds for anxiety about biometrics necessitates information of the variety of their present and probable applications, as well as the degree to which they symbolize a new growth in recognition systems. While numerous innovations have been practical to recognition techniques, together with photography, fingerprinting, anthropometrics and even identical classification documents. As James Rule enlightened in his learning of five practical surveillance schemes for governments in the late 1960s and near the beginning of 1970s, the obscurity of large-scale cultures, the mobility of people inside such societies and the instant lapses in meetings between agencies and customers imposed the explosion of documentation, the critical purpose of which was to "connect citizens to their pasts." (Ashbourne, 2003) Indeed, contemporary societies are set apart to a major extent by a "way of life of identification" in which persons are allotted representative identities and usually asked to prove those identities in a extensive range of daily dealings. While the desire of government agencies and other communal actors to relate identification procedures, as a means of running their constituents is not a completely novel improvement, biometrics can potentially present important expansions. The pure amount of business data and other information regarding persons that is produced and stored has augmented exponentially in last few years, and biometrics assure to computerize the process of fastening that information to specific organizations. Whereas conservative identification papers required a little measure of knowledge and influence on the part of human representatives liable for reading the papers, machine-readable biometric detection documents give that power to computer systems. In accumulation, conservative identification systems did not engage real-time admission to documentation of information further than identifying data accumulated on any classification manuscript, and they were not as willingly agreeable to creating assessment trails. The capability for computers to interpret an identification text in a lot of cases depends upon right of entry to record of information composed about persons. Each time a processor scans a file and compares it to a existing being, information about that business is formed and can be hoarded in an individual's record, allowing more careful tracking of people's dealings and movements. Thus biometrics is essential components in the ever more cybernetic excellence of bureaucratic supervision, allowing advice loops of data compilation and record maintenance that stay bound to detailed embodied uniqueness. Government agencies have a major opportunity to take advantage of on the rising "homeland safety" era, and in fact contributed in the very building of the strategies and agendas that would describe "homeland safety." (Maltoni, 2002)furthermore, the attention of biometrics business brokers to move forward their technologies following 9/11 interpreted well into the existing public strategy and press reaction to the attacks, distinguished by the frenzied twist to so-called "safety experts" to wonder about the basis of security breakdowns and to give advice for "stopping the subsequent one." (Maltoni, 2002)The biometrics business readily responded the call for specialist information of safety issues and technologies, suggesting their identification arrangements as the answer to the original terrorist danger. Most daringly, proponents of face detection technology frequently recommended that such systems could have prohibited at slightest one of the hijackings. But whereas 9/11 facilitated to fuel implementation of biometric systems, concentration in and advance of these technologies heralds those events and expands beyond strictly definite government security functions (Maltoni, 2002). These pains to combine biometrics with extra multifaceted automatic vision technologies, as well as with the more and more cybernetic class of governmental observation, make problems debate about the societal and following suggestions of these technical alterations. Most researchers argue that a wider application of biometric technology applies to the e-government projects. For instance, many countries in e-voting use biometric technology. This method is done to ensure that voters don’t vote twice (Maltoni, 2002). With biometric technology; you find that the government uses this technology to prevent fraud during elections. During this process, the government by use of the various types of biometric technology say fingerprints, hand, facial and iris recognition are used to identify these persons. Facial recognition is one of the systems used in this case by the government. Citizens’ facial images are recorded in software in the computer and these images are used to compare voters who come to vote during that time. If a person happens to vote twice, then the machine will detect this and the person who voted twice will be disqualified (Maltoni, 2002). Also incases of double registration, this software can be used to detect this problem. This is because the software is used to compare the various images in the stored data with those who come to vote that day and when two images rhyme, and then the software can detect this problem. As a result, the e- government uses biometric technology to ensure that the governmental elections are free and fair and there is no case of fraud in these elections that might lead to nullification of these results (Garfinkel, 2003). Every nation as an ethics should identify its citizens so that the country can be in a position to know its citizens and the non-citizens. This is seen in national identification cards, visas and passports. In identification, the government uses the biometric technology by use of the various aspects like the figure prints in these documents to ensure that people can be identified correctly (Bolle, 2003). As a result, the government is in a position to identify its citizens in the production of these documents hence reducing the issue of illegal immigration in that country. Immigration authorities make use of biometrics to help the government stop illegal movements to or from the country. As a result, biometric technology can be used by the host country to identify these people whether criminals or not. The government uses the various types of biometric identification in order to control certain illegal behavior in that country. For example in case of a crime, the e -government uses the biometric technology to identify these criminals. For example; the government uses the fingerprint method to identify these criminals who might have escaped. The government compares the fingerprint of this criminal with its records that it already has in the stored database to confirm whether it’s the real person. A good number discussions of their allusions point to the possibility of the new technologies to allow extra powerful infringements on person privacy; not least for the reason that biometrics take aspire at the human body. Nevertheless, biometrics is "privacy-invasive" because they make public a little about the intrinsic qualities of human bodies; still DNA identification skills make public little in this consideration. to a certain extent, biometrics are "privacy-invasive" as they are a dangerous constituent in bigger networks, or crowds, for the omnipresent identification of persons. Identification is for eternity both an individualizing and categorizing procedure, and therefore biometrics are labeled as individualizing and a categorizing technology (Chirillo, 2003). Facial-recognition schemes make opportunities to recognize people inconspicuously and without their assistance, example in video surveillance, and they can be best used for e-government plans for driver's licenses (Millar, 2001). Biometric organizations also have established their cost-effectiveness in e-government welfare systems and boundary power, where the arrangement costs fewer efforts both in times of searching and employing than engaging a person to do the same job. In criminal detection, biometric technology can put aside investigators countless hours of labor and resolve crimes that might stay unsolved using customary police observations. The public usually accepts the employment of biometric systems as a essential part of doing trade in today's crime driven society (Pejas, 2004). With protection in place to defend the legal and solitude rights of people, associations can make use of biometric systems with the collaboration of the community. Certainly, biometric skill can help today’s e-government agencies in both the community and private division answer crimes, protect identities, safeguard entrances to buildings and boundaries, protect computer databases and complex networks, and dissuade deception in the districts they serve (Pejas, 2004). CONCLUSION The expertise of biometrics is intended to generate greater simplicity of admission for a few, and additional complicatedness of admission for others, depending on their place in "the pyramid of privilege declarations" of the information culture. The access advantaged classes on the peak of this pyramid, counting a worldwide privileged of commerce and explorer/consumer people benefit from better handiness, mobility and safekeeping along with the common operation of novel government inspection and detection technologies. Those on the bottom of this access pyramid, a greatly bigger figure of citizens, heavily symbolized by those from the universal south--are further bothered, powerless and unconfident. REFERENCES Ashbourn, Julian: Practical Biometrics: From Aspiration to Implementation (Springer Professional Computing Guide) Springer-Verlag London Ltd (Dec 2003) Bolle, Ruud: Guide to Biometrics (Springer Professional Computing) (Hardcover) Springer-Verlag New York Inc. (Dec 2003) Chirillo, John: Implementing Biometric Security (Wiley Red Books) John Wiley & Sons (9 May 2003) Garfinkel, S. 1997. Web Security & Commerce. Cambridge, MA: O'Reilly & Associates. Maltoni, Davide: Biometric Systems: Technology, Design and Performance Evaluation Springer-Verlag London Ltd (Oct 2002) Millar. 2001:. How information gives you a competitive advantage. Harvard Business Review 63: 149-160. Pejas, Jerzy: Enhanced Methods in Computer Security, Biometric and Artificial Intelligence Systems Springer-Verlag New York Inc. (1 Nov 2004) Stapleton. 2000. A biometric standard for information management and security. Computers & Security 19: 428-441. Stoica, Adrian: Biometric Inverse Problems (Hardcover) CRC Press Inc (5 May 2005) Mahar. 2000. Perceived acceptability of biometric security systems. Computers and Security 14: 225-231. APPENDIX TABLE 1 BIOMETRIC TECHNOLOGY Legend for Chart: A - Technology B - Description A B Hand Geometry Features: evaluates the shape and curves of the hand, some use three dimensional perspectives, suitable for large database, infrequent usage, and less disciplined users Pros: easy to use, good balance of performance features, high accuracy, flexible performance tuning and configuration, ease of integration into other systems Cons: not many applications developed, still in infancy Applications: used at airports, legislative buildings in some foreign countries, daycare centers, hospitals, prisons, and immigration facilities. Examples: Examples can be found at the home page of The Biometric Consortium (2003b) Signature Scan Features: traditional device, a behavioral device, it checks the way a person signs his/her name, and writes letters Pros: fairly accurate Cons: age effect changes the pattern, not as accurate as other biometrics Applications: a crude non-automated version used in retailers point-of-sale systems; also used to secure PDA devices Examples: Examples can be found at the home page of The Biometric Consortium (2003b) Fingerprint Features: matches the minutiae, pattern, ultrasonic, or moiré fringe imprint; most common of all devices, works well in controlled environment Pros: good accuracy, low false acceptance, low cost, small size, ease of integration Cons: usage errors, high false rejection with large database Applications: most widely used in industry for a wide range of applications; used in biometric mouse and other similar devices to secure desktop and mobile computers; used for authentication in distributed networks Examples: Examples can be found at the home page of The Biometric Consortium (2003b) Voice Scan Features: measures the wavelengths and frequencies of the voice Pros: amplitude and frequency modulations provide high accuracy Cons: variability of transducers and local acoustics, complicated enrollment procedure, user-unfriendly, age and hardware cause variability Applications: shows strong potential for use in securing mobile computers, PDAs and other similar devices; employed by many large companies to protect computer, office, lab, and vault access Examples: Examples can be found at the home page of The Biometric Consortium (2003b) Iris Scan Features: scans the iris of the eye and digitizes a pattern for matching purposes, works well in identification mode Pros: less intrusive than retina scan, higher matching performance, works well with glasses, across ethnic groups Cons: difficult to use and integrate with other systems Applications: welfare fraud prevention in Illinois; beginning to be used in ATM machines; used to enable single sign-on in distributed networks; used in smart cards, workforce management, network security and authentication Examples: Examples can be found at the home page of The Biometric Consortium (2003b) Retina Scan Features: a digital image of the retina of the eye is created to match the pattern against a live sample, scanning done by a low-intensity light via an optical coupler Pros: highly accurate Cons: problems with glasses, intrusive Applications: welfare fraud prevention in Illinois; used to enable single sign-on in distributed networks Examples: Examples can be found at the home page of The Biometric Consortium (2003b) Facial Scan Features: measures the curves on the cheeks and the lips to ascertain the identity Pros: larger number of variables can be studied Cons: difficult to use, limited success in applications Applications: used at several airports and other public locations since 09/11/01 Examples: Examples can be found at the home page of The Biometric Consortium (2003b) Keystroke Scan Features: A behavioral biometric device. It measures the force applied and the pattern used to push keys on a keyboard Pros: very convenient with little intrusion Cons: possible interference of noise, caused by hands movement, not associated with actual keystroke Applications: not widely used; has good potential for continuous authentication Examples: Examples can be found at Krochmal (1998), BioPassword (2001), BioChec (2003b) TABLE 2 BIOMETRIC PERFORMANCE MEASURES False accept rates (FAR): probability that an impostor may be falsely accepted by the system. False reject rates (FRR): probability that the genuine user may be rejected by the system. Both these measures are expressed in percentage (of error transactions) terms, and are designed to capture the accuracy of a biometric technology. Generally, physical biometrics is considered more accurate than behavioral biometrics. Equal error rate: the point of intersection between the FAR and FRR; represents a more realistic measure of performance than either FAR or FRR quoted in isolation; the threshold is plotted on the x-axis and error rate plotted on the y-axis. ROC Curve: Receiver Operating Characteristic (ROC) is the plot of all theoretical false accepts and false reject rates for each biometric technology. The y-axis of the graph shows the probability of verification, whereas the x-axis plots the false alarm rate. CER: The Crossover Error Rate is a reflection of the accuracy of the system. The lower the CER, the higher the accuracy. It is obtained by plotting the FAR and FRR. Each point on the plot denotes a hypothetical performance at various sensitivity settings. Ease of use: the relative user-friendly feature of biometric technology. User acceptance: Usually the relative intrusiveness of biometric technology will define how easily it is accepted by users. Read More