That is true, in a very few cases, a certain biometric authentication method
may not work for a particular person. That is why there are several
different methods available. There are fingerprint scanners that when a
finger is placed on the sensor matrix, a very small signal is coupled from
the drive ring to the subdermal layer of the skin. This signal follows the
ridges and valleys of the true fingerprint. What that means is that if the
surface of a fingerprint is damaged or worn, the underlying fingerprint is
still accessible.

As to the point of a person may lose a finger or an eye. I would suggest
that they would have a much larger problem to deal with than worrying about
logging on to their computer. Also, typical fingerprint authentication
systems enroll more than one finger for verification. This helps to deal
with issues such as cuts on a finger.
  
As to the second point that biometric devices are expensive. A pc microphone
comes with most computers these days, as well as pc net cams. There are
currently 5 vendors that include fingerprint scanners in their laptops and
several that include built in net cams.

Steve

 
-----Original Message-----
From: KuroiNeko [mailto:evpopkovcarrier.kiev.ua]
Sent: Monday, June 25, 2001 11:41 PM
To: secprogsecurityfocus.com
Subject: Re: CDSA-biometrics

> I'm doing a thesis in implementing CDSA (Common Data Security
> Architecture)
> in a program used for secure authentication. I'm going to use biometric
> devices for this purpose.

 Don't expect biometrics to be all-it-takes. A real-life example. A bank
had a dactiloscopic scanner to authenticate users of rented private vault
cells. A woman came to rent a cell, but they simply could not establish an
account for her because she was a typist and her fingertips were so soft
and papillar pattern was so blurry (very thin skin) that scanner simply
could not identify her.
 Also, marketoids of biometric systems tend not to tell you one really
important thing: you should not assume that a part of human body used for
auth will always remain and always be the same. A person can loose a finger
in a disaster, ditto an eye. Skin tends to change fast, especially
fingertips, voices change, even adults' voices.
 Provided that biometric scanners and recognition software still cost a
fortune, and they still have to be backed up by traditional auth methods,
real advantage of biometrics is still questionable.

--
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