Today, security is becoming increasingly important, especially in an age where crimes such as identity theft can occur without the victims' knowledge and may not be discovered until damage is extensive and difficult if not impossible to correct. Biometric security systems provide a layer of protection that makes "non-direct" victim crimes more difficult to perpetrate.
Access control
Biometric security systems and biometric access control identify users through behavioral or physical characteristics that are completely individual. These are difficult if not impossible to borrow, steal, or forge. Biometrics has been used to solve crimes for generations; fingerprints, for example, are one example of biometrics that has been used to solve crimes once they have occurred.
Crime prevention
Today, biometrics can also be used to help prevent crimes before they occur, and can also provide general security of a much more effective nature than previous systems could provide. Biometrics can include identification of a physical nature, such as the aforementioned fingerprints, palm or hand geometry, iris or retina configuration, and facial characteristics. It can also encompass "measurement" of behavioral characteristics, such as a particular customer's pattern of credit card use, to help prevent theft and other crimes.
In regard to e-commerce applications and other situations whereby physical contact and therefore physical biometric access control characteristics cannot be used, behavioral security systems using biometrics come into play. With behavioral biometric access control, characteristics such as voice patterns, keystroke patterns, signature, and "typical" credit card usage patterns for a particular person are used to determine that someone posing as a given individual is, indeed, that individual. This helps thwart crimes like identity theft because they help merchants and other businesses determine that, for example, an individual making a purchase on a particular website is legitimate and not someone who's stolen a credit card number to make an illegal purchase.
Examples of biometrics used for biometric security systems
· Fingerprints
Fingerprints are among the oldest biometrics technologies used to solve crimes; for more than a century, police have used fingerprints as a means to identify criminal participation at a crime scene. Today, they can also be used for biometric access control; although this has not traditionally been the case, technology has improved so that now, they are increasingly being used for biometric security systems. This particular application is most effective for in-house systems.
· Hand geometry
Hand geometry is a relatively new arrival for biometric security systems, and uses the shape of the hand to identify a particular individual. This type of biometric access control is often used in organizations where an individual must record his or her attendance at an event; because the shape of one's hand can't be forged as a signature can, the physical presence of the individual at the event is guaranteed because the shape of his or her hand has been recorded on-site.
· Iris analysis
The iris is as individual as the fingerprint, and its benefit is that iris identification can be done quickly and with no direct contact between the analyzer and the individual being identified. It's also quick to perform, making useful for high-volume operations where a lot of individuals needing access have to be processed quickly through one point of entry.
It is easy to see the advantages of such systems, and how they can help prevent such crimes as identity theft.
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