Access Control Doctor: Biometrics or not?

03 Nov 09

Q: Should I be installing biometrics?

A: As we all know, biometric readers use unique human properties to identify people. There are a wide range of technologies out there and all of them require you to present a bit of yourself for electronic examination.

The different types of biometric reader range from devices that measure the geometry of your hand, to retina scanners and facial recognition systems. They all do the same thing; make sure that you are you, albeit with varying degrees of accuracy and cost.

Walking around a security exhibition, you would be forgiven for thinking that the vast majority of access control systems being installed today use biometric readers. It is, however, RFID proximity tokens that are by far the most widely used.

In some situations, biometric technology does have its advantages. There are two ways that biometric readers can be employed; identification and verification. Here's a rundown of both...

Identification – A fingerprint reader (for example) is used as the sole method of identifying a user. The user simply presents their finger and gains access.

This is terrifically convenient as you don't need to remember a token or anything else. Using biometrics for identification does have its drawbacks, as these systems can be insecure for large numbers of users.

In addition, identification readers can be slow and costly. A large amount of data has to be held for each user to ensure it's unique and the system has to compare the user's fingerprint against every user's information.

Verification – A fingerprint reader is used in conjunction with a token reader (or a combined unit) to confirm that the person attempting access is the authorised card holder.

The user first presents their card and then presents their finger as verification. This is similar to card + PIN that we are all used to using with bank cards.

The point is, of course, that if you should lose your card, it cannot be used by anybody else. The big advantage of biometric verification is that, unlike a PIN, the user does not have to remember their biometric information; it is just part of them.

Also, the security of biometric information is much better than that of a PIN; you can't copy somebody's fingerprint by looking over their shoulder.

There are different ways of achieving biometric verification, the most scalable of which is to have the biometric information stored on the token itself. That way, the individual door control units do not have to store every user's biometric information as it can be downloaded from the token when presented.

Because the system is only performing a 'one to one' match (rather than 'one to many' with ID) the whole process is quick and reliable.

In summary, using biometric readers for identification is a convenient solution for low security doors with not many users. Using biometric readers in conjunction with RFID for verification is an excellent high security solution and systems are able to handle tens of thousands of users.

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