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Enterprise Security Magazine | Thursday, May 12, 2022
As biometrics becomes more accurate in confirming identities, many businesses are implementing one or more types of technology to grant employees access to facilities, devices, and data.
FREMONT, CA: Biometrics, at its most basic, refers to behavioral or physical characteristics used to substantiate a person's identity before granting them access to devices, facilities, or data. As opposed to passwords, biometrics is unique to each individual, permanent, measurable, and forgery-proof. And in the post-pandemic era, biometrics, particularly contactless biometrics, has become even more important.
Biometrics Types
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While there are many different types of biometrics, such as gait recognition and DNA, the following are the most common in business:
Fingerprints: It is one of the most widely used forms of biometric authentication. Vein recognition, which uses infrared light to examine the unique veins in a person's finger, is even more advanced and accurate. Hand geometry, an offshoot of fingerprint and vein recognition, identifies users based on the shape of their hands.
Retina/iris Recognition: This biometrics technique uses infrared light and an IR-enabled camera to identify a person based on the unique pattern of their iris or retina.
Facial Recognition: Facial recognition systems detect a person by matching facial features such as the distance between the eyes or the jawline's length to a known face database. These systems are becoming increasingly three-dimensional.
Voice Recognition: Voice biometry verifies a person's identity by comparing their tone, pitch, and frequencies to a previously stored voice template. Recent testing reveals a false acceptance rate of only 0.01 percent.
Behavioral Identifiers: Behavioral identifiers are a subset of biometrics, distinct from physical biometrics. It typically uses a variety of factors about a person's work environment, such as mouse and keyboard movements, how they write, how they hold objects, how they gesture, how they walk, and physiological characteristics, to create a user profile. A company can then be certain that it is the correct user, not someone else, typing on their keyboard.
Trust but Verify
Regardless of how effective biometric identification is, it is always prudent to exercise caution. Experts continue to recommend using two biometric factors or one biometric factor plus something else, such as a password.
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