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