The first Human Factor is the issue of privacy rights, and why it is such a “hot issue” with biometric technology. The reasons include the fear of your employees giving up their physical and biological attributes to the biometric system, the biometric data being stored in a “black box”, and that data being shared with third parties.

With regards to your employees’ physically being scanned-yes, there is a very brief moment in time the biometric system extracts the images of these characteristics such as your fingerprint, various facial images, as well as parts of the iris. However, it is important to remember that these physical and biological characteristics are not what are stored in the biometric database for subsequent comparison.

For most biometric systems, the binary mathematical data is created and stored, not an image of the persons finger print. These biological and physical characteristics are converted into a mathematical form. These mathematical files are stored in the biometric database, which is used for verification or identification.

The templet cannot be reversed or engineered to recreate the physical and biological images that were captured in the first place by the biometric system. Also, it is important to remember that every time your employees use the biometric system, another template is created and is never the same from the original template. In other words, there are never two templates which are identical for the same person. The probability of reverse engineering is almost zero. So it is important that you tell your employees this and explain to them that their physical characteristics are never stored-nor can the biometric template be reverse engineered.

The fear of a biometric template being stored in a black box is completely untrue. Biometric devices (especially the finger scan reader and the hand reader) can operate in a stand alone mode or in a networked environment mode.

Therefore, the biometric templets are stored in the device itself, or at a networked environment. It is just as important that you tell your employees how the biometric system will be configured (there is no need to give all the technical details-just enough to tell them where authentication will take place-at a local level, or in a networked environment). The bottom line is that your employees should be told exactly where their templates are being stored.

The next human factor issue is, if the biometric system can cause any physical ailments to your employees? To our knowledge, there have been no documented cases. Obviously, if you know of employees who are sick and use your biometric system, you will want to clean the device per the vendor’s suggestions - so that nobody else can contract the germs. But also remember, in the business world, we are exposed every day to things that could cause sickness - such as public transportation, shaking hands with customers and business contacts, opening and closing doors etc. Also, to our knowledge, there have been no reported cases of a biometric system actually causing physical damage to a user.

Some of the technologies can be considered user invasive to a certain degree, which could cause discomfort. It is true with retinal scanning devices. Users would have to put their eye into a receiver, and the eye pupil would be scanned by infrared light beam. The iris scanning technology is not so much invasive - a user can stand as far as three feet away and still have their iris scanned by the camera. Again, there will be resistance among your employees about eyes scanning. But the key thing to stress to your employees is that they cannot go blind by having their eyes scanned. The technology is very safe to use. Iris scanning devices are being implemented worldwide, especially at airports to expedite the process of immigration and customs.