This Issue:Biometric Authentication: What Future Holds

Fingerprint identification has come a long way. There have been plenty of

instances, where fingerprint readers were fooled by fake fingers made up of

gelatin and forged fingerprints from glass. Over a period of time, fingerprint

readers can be expected to overcome these issues, but what if a finger is stolen

for gaining access! Many of you will recall the Malaysian incident, where car

thieves chopped off the owner's finger to gain access to a car. Similar brutal

stories and other softer ones, such as the use of USB sniffers to capture

fingerprints and stealing of fingerprints from unencrypted storage are already

making waves. Nonetheless, fingerprint-based identification still remains the

most sought after biometric recognition technique. Face recognition is also

getting popular, as we see a number of laptops with an inbuilt face recognition

mechanism with even some of the upcoming mobiles use this technique. But it's

really too early to make any comments on it, as matching face to photo is

seemingly harder than it was thought initially. In the US, we have heard a

police department discontinuing facial recognition system, owing to inefficiency

of the implementation. Catching bad guys has never been easy, but the new

technique under test, which relies on gait recognition, holds some promise. It

is said to identify people from 500 feet distance and uses characteristics of an

individual while walking, as an image sequence. As they say, beauty lies in the

eyes of the beholder, but the beauty of iris recognition technique lies in the

fact that it is the most statistically proven biometric authentication

technology. A recent report claims that misidentification rate for iris scans is

only 1 in 1,200,000. The fact that patterns of iris are complex and unique for

every person makes this technology tick. The only problem is that it's not

cheap. Another biometric authentication technique, Vein Recognition, works by

analyzing patterns of a vein. When a hand is placed inside a scanner, it traces

veins through infrared rays. The thickness combined with location of veins are

unique to identify an individual. Even though this technique was commercialized

in 2004, it still remains an emerging area. Another interesting technique and

the one I am desperately waiting to see is heart beat authentication, still in

the development phase. Here, a person's heart beat measurement is taken through

ECG and ultrasound to generate heart beat prints, unique for each person.

Researchers are developing sensors which can detect heart beat signals sans

physical touch. Once the technique hits the market, it will be exciting to watch

its results, or trying to crack it by faking a heart beat signal! The list is

not comprehensive, but there are plenty of other biometric authentication

technologies that are being



researched, such as smile recognition, skin spectrum, DNA pattern, ear geometry,
nailbed identification etc. So, let's keep our 'fingers' crossed and wait for a

biometric technology or even a combination of two or more technologies to make

an impact and trust me the time is not too far away!

Swapnil Arora Issue Editor for this month