Biometric devices

Biometric devices

Biometrics devices are technological tools that use biological properties such as fingerprints, retina scans and voice recognition to identify individuals. It is an automated tool that is computerized to identify individuals using their distinctive physio-biological or behavioral measurements. Businesses are now increasingly using biometrics in order to regulate access to their environment and information. Even governments are considering implanting biometric devices in passports, driver's licenses, and possibly a future national ID card to regulate national security. Nowadays, fingerprint scanners are the most popular form of biometric device used, with a variety of systems in the market. These devices used to be big in the past, however now they are found in smaller sizes; it can even be incorporated in a laptop. A fingerprint scanner basically provides an identification of a person based on the acquisition and recognition of those unique patterns and ridges of one’s fingerprint. The equipments for this type of biometric is composed of a reader or a scanner, software that converts the scanned information into digital form and compares match points and a database that stores the biometric data for comparison. The way this device functions is, it remembers the patterns of ridges and valleys unique to one’s finger, then it compares the stored pictures of his finger to the one that is being scanned and when it matches, the result is positive.

sources
http://www.cippic.ca/biometrics/
http://bizsecurity.about.com/od/windowsdesktopsecurity/a/fingerscanner.htm
http://www.bromba.com/faq/biofaqe.htm
http://www.webopedia.com/DidYouKnow/Computer_Science/2004/fingerprint.asp