What is Biometrics?

The word biometrics comes from the Greek words bio and metric, meaning “life measurement”. By measuring something unique about an individual and using that to identify them, we can achieve a dramatic improvement in security of the organization. Biometrics are best defined as measurable physiological and / or behavioral characteristics that can be utilized to verify the identity of an individual. They include fingerprints, retinal and iris scanning, hand geometry, voice patterns, facial recognition and other techniques. They are of interest in any area where it is important to verify the true identity of an individual. Initially, these techniques were employed primarily in specialist high security applications; however we are now seeing their use and proposed use in a much broader range of public facing situations.

What was wrong with cards, Passwords and PINs?

PINs (personal identification numbers) were one of the first identifiers to offer automated recognition. However, it should be understood that this means recognition of the PIN, not necessarily recognition of the person who has provided it. The same applies with cards and other tokens. We may easily recognize the token, but it could be presented by anybody. Using the two together provides a slightly higher confidence level, but this is still easily compromised if one is determined to do so. A biometric however cannot be easily transferred between individuals and represents as unique an identifier as we are likely to see. If we can automate the verification procedure in a user friendly manner, there is considerable scope for integrating biometrics into a variety of processes.

It means that verifying an individuals identity can become both more streamlined (by the user interacting with the biometric reader) and considerably more accurate as biometric devices are not easily fooled. In the context of travel and tourism for example, one immediately thinks of immigration control, boarding gate identity verification and other security related functions. However, there may be a raft of other potential applications in areas such as marketing, premium passenger services, online booking, and alliance programmers and so on where a biometric may be usefully integrated into a given process at some stage. In addition, there are organization related applications such as workstation / LAN access, physical access control and other potential applications. This does not mean those biometrics are a panacea for all our personal identification related issues - far from it! But they do represent an interesting new tool in our technology toolbox, which we might usefully consider as we march forward into the new millennium.

XPEG and Biometrics

With the discussion written above, we would like to conclude the matter with the evolution of XPEG in the biometric industry. Today, the most popular biometric system in use in based upon the fingerprint technology. Fingerprint technology being a costlier affair drove XPEG to come up with a less costly biometric authentication system while maintaining at least the same level of robustness. In the subsequent section we will see why XPEG chose facial and voice authentication technique and how XPEG come up with a new revolutionary system.