Volume III, Issue X, October 2014 IJLTEMAS ISSN 2278 - 2540 www.ijltemas.in Page 12 An Introduction to Biometrics: The Power of Security Selva Priya G 1 , Anitha P 2 , Vinothini C 3 1 PG Scholar, Department of CSE, Dr. N.G.P Institute of Technology 2 Assistant Professor , Department of CSE, Dr. N.G.P Institute of Technology 3 Assistant Professor, Department of CSE, Dr. N.G.P Institute of Technology Abstract- Biometrics is the science of establishing security for person identification. It refers to the automatic recognition of a person based on his/her physiological or behavioral characteristics. It is possible to confirm or establish an individual’s identity based on the traditional methods involving passwords and PIN numbers for its accuracy and case sensitiveness by using biometrics. Examples of such applications include secure access to laptops, buildings, cellular phones, computer systems and ATMs. In the absence of strong personal recognition schemes, these systems are vulnerable to an impostor. In this paper, a brief overview for biometrics will be presented. Index terms Biometrics, security, identification, impostor. I. INTRODUCTION biometric system is essentially a pattern-recognition system that recognizes a person based on a feature vector derived from a specific physiological or behavioral characteristic that the person possesses [1]. A biometric system based on a physiological characteristics is generally more reliable than one which adopts behavioral characteristics, even if the latter may be more easy to combine within certain specific applications. Biometric system which perform in two modes: verification or identification. Identification which comparing the acquired biometric information against templates corresponding to all users in the database. In verification, it involves comparison with only those templates corresponding to the privilege identity. This suggests that identification and verification are two problems that should be deal with separately. A biometric system consists of four basic components:  Sensor – It collects data and then converts the information to a digital format.  Signal processing algorithms – It perform quality control activities and then develop the biometric template.  Data Storage – It keeps information that new biometric templates will be compared to  Matching algorithm – It compares the new biometric template to one or more templates in data storage  Decision Process – It uses the results from matching component to make a system-level decision (either automated or human-assisted) A. Physiological vs. Behavioral When describing this biometric technology, it is essential to distinguish between physiological and behavioral human characteristic. A physiological characteristic is relatively a stable human physical characteristic, such as a iris pattern, fingerprint, or blood vessel pattern on the back of the eye. This type of measurement is coherent and fixed without significant duress. Alternatively, a behavioral characteristic is a reflection of an individual psychological character, although physical peculiarity such as size and gender have a major inspiration. Some of the examples of behavioral peculiarity used to identify individuals include: Keystroke dynamics, and speech identification and/or verification [2]. B. Physical Biometrics 1. Fingerprint: Analyzing fingertip blueprint 2. Facial recognition/face location: Measuring facial physical appearance 3. Hand geometry: Measuring the of the hand outline 4. Iris scan: Analyzing highlight of colored ring of the eye 5. Retinal scan: Analyzing blood container in the eye 6. Vascular patterns: Analyzing vein blueprint 7. DNA: Analyzing genetic nature 8. Biometric data watermarking (which is really a method rather than a physical aspect) is used to store/hide biometric information [3]. C. Behavioral Biometrics 1. Speaker/voice recognition: Analyzing vocal deeds 2. Signature/handwriting: Analyzing signature active 3. Keystroke/patterning: Measuring the interval spacing of typed words A