In a quickly expanding age of technology where the boundaries between the real and digital realms remain blurred, reliable and safe authentication is becoming increasingly important. Credentials and pin codes, for instance, are subject to a wide variety of attacks, increasing the risk of fraud and data breaches. To tackle these issues, biometric authentication has emerged as a novel method capable of improving security and transforming how we interact with technologies.
Due to significant technical improvements, biometrics has moved from criminal identification devices to various businesses and everyday responsibilities, such as accessing a smartphone or ensuring a safe bank transfer. In 2022, the biometric authentication sector was valued at $28 billion and is further predicted to experience growth, reaching $70 billion by 2027, further reflecting its growing demand and implementation across sectors.Â
In order to get a more in-depth understanding of this sector, let’s dive in to navigate all about this domain right from its fundamentals!
Understanding Biometrics
Biometric authentication is an authentication method that uses specific biological traits of persons such as retinas, irises, vocal, facial features, and fingerprints to verify individuals. This procedure manages digital and tangible assets such as properties, rooms, and other equipment.
Types of Biometric Modalities
While biometrics have additional uses, they are most commonly utilised in security, which means they can be classified into three types:
- Biological biometrics make use of hereditary and molecular properties. These may include characteristics such as DNA or blood that may be analysed using a small amount of your body’s fluids.
- Morphological biometrics are concerned with the structure of the human body. More bodily traits, such as your sight, fingerprint, or facial shape, can be mapped with security detectors.
- Behavioural biometrics depend on tendencies that are unique to each individual. If these movements are recorded, moving, speaking, or even typing on a keyboard can reveal your identity.
How Biometric Authentication Works?
Biometric authentication operates via a comparison of two sets of data: one that has been set by the gadget’s owner, and the second is set by the gadget’s visitor. If the two values are virtually identical, the device recognises that “visitor” and “owner” are identical persons and grants permission.
One important point to note is that the link between every set of data has to be broadly comparable but not exact. This is because matching two biometric data sets is nearly impossible. For instance, you might have a damp finger or a small scar that affects the shape of the impression.
Methods of Biometric Authentication
There are numerous methods for identifying a user based on their unique physique. The following are the most common biometric applications that have navigated their way to the hands of users.
Fingerprint Scanners
Fingerprint scanners are classified into optical, capacitive, and ultrasonic. Let’s see how it works.
- An optical scanner photographs the finger, recognises the print sequence, and converts it into a security code.
- A capacitive scanner measures electrical impulses transmitted from the fingertips to the scanner. Print ridges directly contact the scanner, transmitting electrical current, whereas troughs between print ridges produce air gaps.
- Ultrasonic scanners will emerge in the next version of smartphones. It will essentially produce ultrasounds that will be reflected back to the scanner. Like a capacitive sensor, it creates a map of the person’s finger.
Scanners for Retina Displays
Since the retina and iris remain nearly intact throughout a person’s lifespan, security experts believe the eye to be one of the most dependable body components for biometric authentication. A retinal scanner will use infrared light to illuminate the intricate blood vessels in an individual’s eye, rendering them more apparent than the tissue around them. No two people will ever have identical retinal patterns.
Scanners for Iris
Iris scanners depend on excellent images or motion pictures of an individual’s irises. Iris scanners have been found to be simple to deceive merely by utilising a superb snapshot of the individual’s eyes or face. Whenever it concerns biometrics, the iris has multiple significant advantages over a fingerprint:
- When you touch anything, you do not spread information around.
- The iris remains almost unchanged throughout an individual’s life. On the other hand, a fingerprint can get dirty, damaged, or degraded with time.
- You are unable to utilise a fingerprint scanner if your hands are unclean or sweaty. Irises, on the other hand, have no such issue.
Speaker Identification
Speaker recognition, as opposed to voice recognition, seeks to recognise who is speaking rather than what is being spoken.
In order to recognise the speaker, the customised software will split their speech into small packets of frequencies known as formants. These formant packets also comprise an individual’s tone, forming his voiceprint.
Facial Recognition Software
In general, facial recognition technologies approach biometric authentication from a variety of perspectives.
The traditional method is to simply retrieve the elements of your face from an image (eyes, nose, space between your lips and nose, etc.) and then contrast them to other photographs to find an appropriate match.
Skin texture evaluation converts your unique contours, beauty traces, wrinkles, and so on into a mathematical domain and is then applied to other photographs.
DNA Based
Deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) is an extremely accurate technique of personal identification. It is merely digital and remains unchanged over time. As DNA is the structure that shapes who we have become intellectually and physically, no other individual can possess the same set of genes. This certainly cannot be applied to twins who are identical.
Conclusion
To summarise, biometric authentication is an exciting development in the world of digital safety that strengthens our defences against cyber attacks and streamlines and enhances our digital operations. As we explore the possibilities and applications of this technology, we must remain attentive in our devotion to safe, secure, and ethical applications. Demystifying biometric authentication highlights its critical role in designing a safer and more convenient digital future for each of us.
Consider Two Factor Authentication (2FA) offered by Eduonnix to learn how to establish protection against many security threats.
