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| Biometric Technology Introduction | One of the remarkable ability of human and most animals is to identify friends from foes. Such ability is critical for survival from ancient time till now. Because wrongly identifying a foe as a friend could mean goodwill abused, property or wealth stolen, valuable information lost to undesirable hands, life of oneself and family members is in danger or in larger scale, the society or nation threatened.
 The reverse will equally cost one dearly in societal and personal relationship. If you think about it, our ability to recognize people has been developed since young and is used daily - we recognize our family members, friends and foes, primarily through face and voice. Our daily transactions, from purchasing things at the nearby convenience stores, entering our house or office to large monetary transactions at a bank involve our identity and the means of authenticating it. Indeed, it is diffusive in our daily life.
Even in the current Information Technology (IT) age, identity authentication is very crucial. IT brings capability for electronic transaction where face-to-face or other means of personal contact is not necessary. The lack of personal contact makes identifying the real user necessary and difficult. Because the traditional means of identity authentication and where being anonymous and staying anonymous is the desired feature of the Internet.
Traditional means of identity authentication using keys and cards, or personal identification numbers (PINs) and passwords are ill apt for such a task. For example, if you would like to purchase anything in the Internet, most likely you will require a credit card number to authenticate who you are and that you want to pay for goods. But, such a number can be obtained rather easily by hackers, not to mention the numerous fake credit cards in circulation. Bank cards use PINs to authenticate one's identity. However PINs can be obtained easily either because the users wrote the PINs behind their cards or that the PINs were obtained through observation or fraudulent means. Some users have more than one bank account and thus it is challenging to remember all the PINs on top of the various PINs/passwords used daily.
The most important issue is how to identify the "real" person without resorting to any complex and troublesome mechanism for verification. Biometrics is seen as one of the best candidates to solve this problem. Essentially, biometrics is the automated approach to authenticate the identity of a person using the individual's unique physiological or behavioral characteristics such as fingerprint, face, voice, signature etc. Since it is based on a unique trait which is part of you, you do not have to worry about forgetting it, losing it or leaving it at some place.
Since it is unique to you, it is more difficult for others to copy, duplicate or steal it. Thus in general, biometrics offers a more secure and friendly way of identity authentication. Biometric methods of identification are preferred over traditional methods including passwords and PIN numbers for such reasons:
1. The person that is identifying must be physically presented at workplace.
2. Biometric identification omits the need to remember a password or carry a card. Biometric recognition can be used in identification mode, where the biometric system identifies a person from the entire enrolled population by searching a database for a match.
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