Sense of identity

by Kim Powell

It’s not hard to imagine the humble house key becoming obsolete. As biometric technologies enter the office environment, using a fingerprint to unlock the front door is far from the realm of science fiction. Essentially, these technologies use unique body characteristics, such as a fingerprint, iris pattern or face shape, to identify an individual.

“Biometrics also answers a big problem in today’s world,” says Francois Romanet, managing director, Sagem Australasia.

“All security breaches are created by a trust problem and biometrics brings something that tokens or smartcards or passwords do not have, and it’s a concept of identification. If a system is scanning my eye or my face or my finger, I am the only person who can be authorised and identified. It’s not the same case when you have a smart card with a pin code that can be stolen or given to someone else. And obviously the weakest point is a password that can be guessed or hacked.

“But biometrics goes to one level above where you are really promoting a concept of identification that is not possible with other technology.”

Sagem Australasia supplies Australian government agencies with biometrics solutions such as SmartGate, the customs gate at the airport that uses face recognition technology to process arrivals, and CrimTrac, the national fingerprint identification scheme.

“They’re extremely secure and they’re extremely convenient,” Mr Romanet says.

“As users start to use, for example, fingerprint recognition to open the door to access premises or to access a computer or network resource, they will find it very convenient instead of cumbersome security mechanism that were used in the past. There have been studies that have shown that people have up to 12 passwords just for their work, so you don’t have to remember any of that. You carry your fingerprint or your eye or your face where ever you go so it does make for easy use.”

He says it is possible the technology could replace other security mechanisms, such as swipe cards and passwords, but a combination of smartcards and biometrics makes sense as it eliminates issues of storage. With a smartcard, the template of the fingerprint is stored on the card so the fingerprint unit compares the scan with the information on the card and doesn’t need to store the fingerprint details of every person who needs access at that particular point.

In the palm of your hand
Bob Patterson, associate director of Fujitsu Consulting agrees, and says that while biometric solutions are capable of replacing all other forms of access control, from a business perspective it is sensible to combine biometrics with what you already have.

“It’s an additional control,” he says. “You don’t need to throw out what you’ve currently done, it’s complimentary and it’s perhaps the next level for non-repudiation of a transaction, which could be an access transaction. It’s really difficult to forge [and] we believe that it provides an extra level of authentication.”

Fujitsu is moving into the area of security and identity management, as well as things like voice recognition to try and improve the turnaround of transcripts in courts. The company has also released a small palm vein authentication device, PalmSecure, in which the unique hand markings are used to identify people, and envisages its use in ATMs, personal computers and room access systems. The device comes with a USB adaptor, so potentially all online transactions could involve this additional level of security.

“We’re looking at things like palm vein, which is an identity management tool around access systems where authentication is really important,” Mr Patterson says.

“One of the things that has been identified around the world is that some cultures really don’t like an iris being scanned. Some cultures think that if you’re being fingerprinted that you’re actually being treated like a criminal, so again we’ve actually got to find a way of providing authentication that’s got wider user acceptance. And things like palm vein, because it is contact-less, it’s not invasive, will generate user acceptance rates far in excess of what’s been identified in other ones.”

He says one of the problems with fingerprinting technology is that the units have to be cleaned all the time, whereas with something like palm vein, in which the hand hovers over the sensor, there is less risk of a fingerprint being reused.

“There are also issues depending on the environment, like a laboratory of a health research facility where hygiene is really paramount,” Mr Patterson says.

Looking ahead
Mr Romanet identifies popular culture as an inhibitor to widespread acceptance of this technology.

“There is a bit of confusion and a little bit of paranoia with some people using [iris-scanning technology] because they see the movies and they think that their eyes are being scanned by a laser and that is not the fact at all,” he says.
“The technology uses the same principles as a digital camera to take a picture of your eye and then compares this image to a mathematic representation of the eye held in the system, or in the case of a combination of security measure being used, on a smartcard.

Mr Romanet says there are a lot of new ranges of notebooks on the market integrating a fingerprint sensor, proving that computer manufacturers are using this technology to provide secure access. He even suggests biometric scanning of fingerprints to secure transactions through the web is very much conceivable today.

“In the past what was missing was the entry point, a lot of users did not have the fingerprint scanners in their possession and that’s going to be solved by using this device as a commodity, or integrating this device in common products such as computers or mobile phones,” he says.

“When you will have the ability to scan your finger or your eye or your face or anything else that will differentiate yourself from someone else, then you will potentially use biometrics on a daily basis for securing a large amount of transactions including the simple fact of accessing your computer. The manufacturing price going down allowed this technology to be vitally deployed for daily applications and we will see them becoming commodities where before they were restricted to niche markets where they were used for their highly secure features.”