Biometics: Recent History
The word “biometrics” comes from the Greek language and is derived from the words bio (life) and metric (to measure). This paper will refer to biometrics as the technologies used to measure and analyze personal characteristics, both physiological and behavioral. These characteristics include fingerprints, voice patterns, hand measurements, irises and others, all used to identify human characteristics and to verify identity. These biometrics or characteristics are tightly connected to an individual and cannot be forgotten, shared, stolen or easily hacked. These characteristics can uniquely identify a person, replacing or supplementing traditional security methods by providing two major improvements: personal biometrics cannot be easily stolen and a individual does not need to memorize passwords or codes. Since biometrics can better solve the problems of access control, fraud and theft, more and more organizations are considering biometrics a solution to their security problems. However, biometrics is not a panacea and has some hurdles to overcome before gaining widespread use. This paper will discuss the recent history of biometrics, benefits of biometrics over traditional authentication methods, some of the most widely used biometric technologies and the issues surrounding biometrics to include issues standing in the way of widespread biometric implementation.