* Biometrics for user authentication is going mainstream
For years you’ve been reading about biometrics and finger scans as a form of security. Though the technology is decades old, there haven’t been a lot of widespread practical implementations because the technology has suffered from reliability problems. Until now, that is. Get your finger ready, because biometrics is going mainstream as a means for user authentication.
Perhaps you’ve already presented your finger instead of an ID or credit card when cashing a check or paying a bill. Zions First National Bank has introduced the Zions Express check-cashing service powered by Pay By Touch, a company that specializes in biometric authentication for payment solutions. Customers at Mobil Gas Station Wallis Convenience Store locations in central Missouri can pay for their fuel and snacks with a flick of the finger. These convenience stores also have implemented the Pay By Touch solution in order to speed customers through the buying process.
Biometric authentication has application in the office environment as well. You’ve probably seen biometric readers attached to PCs, ready to verify an authorized user of the system. The authentication process might log you on to just that device, or all the way through to network resources. Now you can expect to see biometrics in use to set a print job in motion.
For example, let’s say that you need to print a very confidential document, but you don’t have a printer directly connected to your PC. Instead, you typically send your output to a shared network printer. In most cases, the print server instructs the printer to spew the documents in the order in which they were received. That means your document is at the mercy of the print queue. What if it prints just as you get an important phone call, and you can’t go pick up the confidential document that shouldn’t be viewed by curious eyes? Uh, oh.
Printer manufacturers are cluing in to this dilemma and are embedding biometric technology into the print process. You can send your document to the printer, but it doesn’t actually print until you authorize the process through a fingerprint scan at the printer. Ringdale with its FollowMe solution for secure and controlled printing is just one example of a company using biometrics to control print security.
Silex America is the “BASF” of embedded biometrics. (You remember those BASF commercials: “We don’t make a lot of products that you use; we make the products you use better.”) Well, Silex has developed a lot of biometric products that the average customer wouldn’t buy directly from Silex. Instead, the technology is embedded into other companies’ solutions – like Pay By Touch.
Gary Bradt is the head of the biometrics division for Silex. According to Bradt, biometrics has been relatively slow to catch on due to reliability and durability issues. For instance, “dry finger” is a condition where the skin on a person’s finger is too dry to allow for reliable recognition by the fingerprint reader. It can often cause false rejection. Silex has developed technology that gets around problems such as “dry finger” and the similarly perplexing “wet finger” condition. With Silex scanners, the finger doesn’t directly touch the sensor, and this increases the accuracy and reliability of the reading. It also eliminates the possibility of the fingerprint being spoofed.
As biometric technologies continue to improve, we should see them becoming more commonplace. Bradt says the biometric readers are mostly external add-on features today, but they will be embedded into products like printers within the next two to three years. “Everyone worries about the security of what’s on the computer without giving much thought to what’s coming off the printer,” says Bradt. Soon, everyone will have to scan their fingers in order to prompt the print action.
Bradt foresees solutions across specific industries. For instance, in a medical clinic, there is a need to strictly control who has access to patient records. Biometrics can be used to help validate a person attempting to access a patient record. Bradt also expects to see biometrics in use for everyday life. He cites the example of having eye sensors in a car to determine if the driver is fatigued.
As thieves get more clever about stealing our identities and duping us into giving out our usernames and passwords, it’s good to know that security and authentication is increasingly based on something that can’t be lost or stolen. Silex calls it your “lifetime identity,” and it’s literally at your fingertips.
