How biometrics help you achieve security for life?

The rapid development of biometric recognition technology has led to biometrics being highly adopted in our daily life. We unlock mobile phones using fingerprints and verify bank transactions with face recognition. Biometrics are also being used in physical access control more than ever, with fingerprints, vein recognition and facial recognition being used to open doors, for example, as well as access cards.

Biometrics to improve convenience

When compared to using an access card for identification, biometrics can give an improved experience. You can forget or lose a card, but you’ll never leave your finger or face at home or lose them. Currently, the most widely used technology for biometric identification is fingerprint recognition, due to it being low cost but still offering reasonably high accuracy.

Using facial recognition or long-distance iris recognition also gives users the ultimate hands-free access. Your face or iris is identified as soon as you’re in range of the sensor, so the doors open as you walk towards them without needing to present a card or finger.

Biometrics to strengthen security

Biometrics are considered to be a better way of verifying that someone is who they claim to be rather than PIN code verification. A PIN can be forgotten or shared with several people, but biometrics can be neither forgotten nor shared. So, in a high security environment, biometrics are often used as a more secure way of verifying identification, in addition to access cards.

Areas of concern

Although biometrics offer huge advantages, there are still areas of concern and even potential risks when using them.

• Accuracy
  Biometric recognition technology ensures a high probability of identifying someone. It can’t, however, provide 100% accuracy – whether fingerprints, veins, irises or faces are used. Each biometric recognition technology has its own false acceptance rate and false rejection rate. In general, iris recognition is most accurate, followed by vein, fingerprint and then face recognition. There are also external factors that influence the accuracy, such as sunlight and the quality and cleanliness of the sensor.
• Privacy
  Biometrics are classified as sensitive personal data in European General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). So it’s important to use and store people’s biometric information in line with local regulations. In some countries, for example, you’re not allowed to store any biometric data in a central database.
• Failure to enroll
  A small number of people can’t be enrolled using some biometric recognition technologies, due to factors such as dry fingers, vague fingerprints, eye disease or irises that are too dark. For applications used by many people, therefore, it’s often better to use multiple biometric technologies.
• Liveness detection
  Presenting a photo of a fingerprint or face can fool some biometric devices and so create opportunities for attackers to breach security. To prevent this,  choose a biometric device that can detect whether or not the identifier presented is part of a living person.

How to choose

The table below shows the biometric recognition technologies most often used in physical access control and compares their characteristics.

* is the lowest and ***** is the highest

Liveness detection and fraud detection are often implemented as add-on functionalities alongside basic biometric recognition technologies. Common technologies detect the warmth, texture and active blood flow of the investigated body parts, or even the person’s gait. Some biometric recognition systems verify identities using one or more detection technologies, while some don’t verify the identity at all to keep costs low. So choose your system carefully based on the various scenarios you’re likely to face.

To comply with local privacy regulations, biometric templates sometimes have to be stored on access cards instead of in a separate database. This means that each person owns and carries their biometric templates. If someone loses their card or it’s stolen and compromised, only this person is affected. This minimise security risks, but also means that biometrics can only be used for verification – identification is still done by the access card.

Due to limited storage, only one or two biometric templates can usually be stored on an access card. And, compared with centrally stored templates, the templates on cards often have a lower resolution, which makes comparing characteristics more difficult. Storing biometric templates on cards might be sufficient for 1:1 verification, but it definitely lowers the accuracy of the matching.

In general, 95% of PACS customers choose 2D fingerprint recognition – mainly because of the lower price. Among 2D fingerprint sensors, multispectral sensors are often a better choice over optical sensors; they’re slightly more expensive but offer higher accuracy and more reliable performance. For high-security environments, iris recognition provides the best accuracy, followed by palm vein recognition and 3D fingerprint recognition.

While facial recognition and multi-finger solutions are often used in hospitals but tend to have a higher price.

What AEOS offers

As an open platform, AEOS has published a Biometric Restful API and Device Integration Protocol so various biometric systems can easily integrate with AEOS.

• AEOS’s biometric interface ensures privacy by design
  By default, no personal information is synchronised between AEOS and biometric systems. Information is only synchronised if the user activates it.
• AEOS’s biometric interface is secure by design
  All IP communication between AEOS and integrated biometric systems is secured.
• AEOS integrates with various biometric systems
  You can choose from a wide range of biometric technologies in various price ranges to integrate with AEOS – including 2D and 3D fingerprint solutions as well as iris and palm vein recognition., And we’re working closely with TBS, Idemia, Suprema, Recogtech, IEVO and Icognize on future integrations.

Security for life

Our work to enable biometric integrations with AEOS is a great manifestation of our security for life philosophy. For us, security is not just about technology, but about people and how they live their daily lives. We believe that the right access control can remove or minimise any concerns or inconvenience relating to security. And, in turn, set people free to live life to its full potential – this is what we call security for life.

Want to know more about integrating biometrics with AEOS to achieve security for life? Please get in touch.

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