Charles Sturt University ITC595: Biometrics Security and Privacy

This report, authored by a student, examines the use of biometrics for authentication, focusing on security and privacy implications. It begins with an introduction to biometric authentication, defining it as a method of verifying an individual's identity through unique characteristics. The report then delves into the research problem, which centers on the security and privacy challenges associated with biometric authentication. A literature review provides a comprehensive overview of biometric systems, including how they function in identification and verification modes, along with block diagrams illustrating enrollment, verification, and identification processes. It discusses potential errors in these systems and explores various applications across government, forensic, and commercial sectors. The report highlights the security and privacy concerns related to biometrics, such as unintended functional and application scope, and covert recognition. The conclusion summarizes the benefits of biometric systems in protecting end-user systems, addressing privacy concerns, and the importance of balancing implementation costs with required security levels. The report also includes a detailed reference list of supporting literature.

Biometrics for Authentication: Security and Privacy
Implications
A. Author
ITC595 MIT, School of Computing & Mathematics, Charles Sturt University
[e-mail]
ABSTRACT –
Keywords— Biometric Systems, Covert recognition
INTRODUCTION
Biometric authentication is defined as the process of the
verification of the identity of an individual. This kind of
technique for verification ensures the verifying of identity of an
individual by focusing over several unique characteristics.
These systems meant for identifying the unique characteristics
of individuals would be able to capture the data, store them in
secure database servers and then confirm and match the data
(Haghighat, Zonouz & Abdel-Mottaleb, 2015). Based on a
perfect match over the two samples of data, the authentication
would be confirmed. In a typical process, the process of
biometric authentication could be used for the management of
access criteria to different digital and physical resources that
includes rooms, buildings and various computing devices.
The discussion in this report focuses over the ways in which
different techniques based on biometric authentication would
be useful for securing of resources. The various challenges or
problems faced by biometric authentication have also been
discussed within the report (Ghayoumi, 2015). The report also
present the future direction based on proposing some benefits
and recommendations for suing the technology.
A. Research Problem
The research focuses over the problems that are faced by
biometric authentication in dealing with the issues of security
and privacy.
B. Research Justification
The research based on the discussion over the biometric
authentication techniques could be justified by focusing over
the implications made by the technique over various areas.
LITERATURE REVIEW
Biometric Systems
A biometric system can be defined as a pattern recognition
system that has the capability to recognize an individual based
on making use of a feature vector. This would be further
derived from the behavioral or psychological characteristic
that is possessed by the person (Ali et al., 2015). This kind of
authentication technique helps in relying over the different
forms of unique characteristics over an individual. Depending
on the type of application context, the biometric system would
be able to operate in two different modes such as:
identification and verification.
In the identification mode, the biometric system would be
able to recognize an individual based on searching over a
particular database template for finding a particular match
(RADZI, HANI & Bakhteri, 2016). This system then conducts a
one-to-many comparison within the database and thus
establishes the identity of the individual (Ngo, Teoh & Hu,
2015). The main purpose of any negative recognition is based
on preventing any authorized person to make use of multiple
identities.
On the other hand, in the verification mode, the biometric
system would be able to validate a person based on the
identification by comparing the characteristic of the captured
biometric with the pre-stored result in the database.
(Figure 1: Block diagrams for enrolling, verifying and
identifying of samples)
(Source: Haghighat, Zonouz & Abdel-Mottaleb, 2015)
The above figure depicts the system of biometric
verification system along with an identification system. Both of
these systems are highly needed for the task of performing
user enrollment. The enrollment module that is used within a
biometric identification system contains an enrollment module
that performs the function of registering the identity of
individuals (Alam et al., 2015). During the phase of enrollment,
the biometric reader would firstly scan the biometric
characteristics of an individual in order to produce the digital
representation.

The system would perform a quick quality check in order to
ensure that the successive stages would be able to reliably
process the captured sample of data. In order to facilitate the
matching functionality, the process of feature extractor would
be able to process the sample of input (Darwaish et al., 2014).
This input would be further generated into a compact and
expressive representation, which is also known as template.
Depending on the type of application, which is making use of
the biometric system it might be able to store the template
into its central database.
Errors in Biometric Systems
A system based on biometric matching and the response
that is generated could be particularly be determined with the
help of a matching score. This score would typically be able to
quantify the amount of similarity present between the input
data and the representations of the template already present
in the database.
Unlike any other systems, the biometric identification
system are prone to errors (DelPozo-Banos et al., 2015). The
most common form of errors that could be made by these
systems are:
1. Mistaking of two biometric measurements collected from
the same person to be compared from other two different
persons.
2. Mistaking of biometric measurements that would be
generated from two different persons that are to be compared
with two same persons.
Applications of Biometric Systems
The different forms of biometric applications could be
categorized in three main groups:
1. Government applications – Different applications in this
sector include correctional facilities, social security, license of
drivers and passport control.
2. Forensic applications – The various applications include
criminal investigation, parenthood determination, determining
of missing children and terrorist identification.
3. Commercial applications – The applications are ATMs,
physical access controls, PDAs, cellular phones, distance
learning and medical records management
Security and Privacy Concerns in relation to Biometrics
With the high rise of different incidents of fraud, different
forms of strong biometric techniques should be put in proper
place in order to secure the end user systems (Blasco et al.,
2016). Strong techniques of biometrics such as fingerprint
would be seen as an increasing technique for protecting the
identity of individuals and thus also ensuring that the
computing systems would remain protected.
There are various kind of legislations that are put in place in
order to define the criteria for biometrics to be implemented
within every organisation. There are various computing
applications in which the software developers have envisaged
the use of biometrics for restricting the anonymous access to
individuals. The previously discussed applications in relation to
biometrics would be able to index the sensitive information of
individuals without the proper form of specification of user
name and the various access mechanisms. Hence, the strong
identifiers that are used in biometrics could be able to
enhance the integrity factor of computer systems to hold
different forms of personal information.
The various concerns in relation to privacy and security are
surrounding the use of biometric technology. The prime use of
this technology is mainly been done for the purpose of
personal recognition of the characteristics of an individual
(Carvalho et al., 2017). The various forms of automated
methods based on individual recognition and biometrics could
carry different implications due to the reason for the rapid use
of such techniques in the area of criminal investigation.
The three main concerns in relation to privacy based on the
implication of biometric identification systems include:
1. Unintended functional scope – since the identifiers
based on biometric systems are particular in origin, the
collection agent would be able to gain and reap individual
information that would be scanned from different criterions of
biometric.
2. Unintended application scope – The use of biometric
identifiers would be able to permit for the feasibility of any
form of undesired identifications (Johnston & Weiss, 2015). In
an additional manner, the different biometric systems are able
to connect different pieces of behavioral information that
would be in regards of persons who would be registered in
various practices.
3. Covert recognition – The systems of biometric
identification would be able to provide a certain level of
elasticity in the various ways in which actions such as
authentication, enrolling, arrangement and identification are
performed (Alpar, 2015). The extreme private and security
concerns in relation to biometrics would link with the capture,
use and storage of data in relation to biometric security
systems.
CONCLUSION
Based on the different discussions over the use of biometric
identification systems, it could be concluded that such kind of
techniques would be able to protect the end user systems. The
biometric systems act as a form of security shield for the
purpose of protecting the end user systems and solves the
concerns in relation to privacy and security of valuable user
information. The research puts major focus over the
discussion based on the use of biometric systems for the
purpose of storing user information and then making use of
them to secure their personal data. Different universities,
companies and various other security systems from all over
the world employ the use of techniques based on biometrics
to secure the financial, corporate and other types of data.
The discussion further puts emphasis over the use of
biometric systems and the various privacy concerns in relation
to the use of such systems. The different institutions should
correlate the cost for the implementation of biometric
systems and the amount of security required for the
organisation. Security is a major concern in the recent times
and thus the user of efficient biometric systems would be able
to secure the various devices and data of the company. Hence,
the biometric systems in the world that are designed for the
security of the end systems should be able to protect the

various aspects within a company and thus the quality of
security of user information should be kept intact.
REFERENCES
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F. (2015). A confidence-based late fusion
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Ali, M. L., Tappert, C. C., Qiu, M., & Monaco, J. V.
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Alpar, O. (2015). Intelligent biometric pattern
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Blasco, J., Chen, T. M., Tapiador, J., & Peris-Lopez, P.
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Carvalho, J. M., Brãs, S., Ferreira, J., Soares, S. C., &
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