What is Biometrics?

Biometrics is an automated system of recognizing a person based on the person's physical or behavioral characteristics.
It is the same system that the human brain uses to recognize and distinguish one person from another. It is a system that recognizes a person based on "who" the person is and does not rely on "what a person is carrying" or "what a person knows." Things that a person can carry, such as keys and ID-badges, can be lost, stolen, and/or duplicated. Things that a person knows, such as passwords and pin-numbers, can be forgotten, stolen, and/or duplicated. Instead, biometrics relies on "who" a person is-on a unique immutable human characteristic that can not be lost, forgotten, stolen or duplicated.

Biometrics, therefore, provides the ultimate level of security, convenience and ease of use. It is this security and convenience that a biometric fingerprint recognition system provides.

Fingerprint Biometrics

Fingerprint biometric devices take a picture of these minutiae points and electronically converts them using a mathematical algorithm into a string of characters uniquely identifying each finger enrolled.  This "template" is then usually stored in an encrypted area of the local hard drive or network user credential management area.  This is known as the enrollment phase of biometric authentication.

During the authentication phase, a new template is made based upon the available minutiae points presented and is compared with the stored template. If the templates match, the user is authenticated and access is granted. If the templates do not match, the user is denied access. Current technology allows for authentication of an individuals identity within a margin of error of .01 to .00001% based upon the algorithm and biometric identifier used. 

Most devices today use between 16 and 40 minutiae points to create a template. It should be noted here that the fingerprint itself is not stored anywhere on the PC or network and creating a fingerprint model from 16-40 minutiae points is virtually impossible.  It is virtually impossible for someone to "steal your fingerprint" even if they had full access to your template on the network or device. 

While a margin of error of 1 in 10,000 to 1 in 1,000,000 may not seem "secure", it is important to understand that there are different types of errors and the way in which each transaction is processed and how errors affect the processing of these transactions can result in near impenetrable security.

The iGuard Security System is a new biometrics (fingerprint identification) Access Control & Time Attendance system for business. Rather than using the traditional optical fingerprint scanner, it uses the most-advanced capacitive fingerprint sensor for fingerprint acquisition, to achieve the highest fingerprint-identification results in the industry.