Biometrics Authentication

Authentication relates to assurance of identity of person or originator of data. Reliable customer authentication is imperative for institutions engaging in any form of electronic banking or commerce. Strong customer authentication practices are necessary to enforce anti-money laundering measures and help financial institutions detect and reduce identity theft. Customer interaction with institutions is migrating from physical recognition and paper-based documentation to remote electronic access and transaction initiation.

With the rapid growth of networked systems and applications such as e-commerce, the demand for effective computer security is increasing. Most computer systems are protected through a process of user identification and authentication. While identification is usually non-private information provided by users to identify them and can be known by system administrators and other system users, authentication provides secret, private user information which can authenticate their identity. The risks of doing business with unauthorized or masquerading individuals in an electronic environment could be devastating, which can result in financial loss and intangible losses like reputation damage, disclosure of confidential information, corruption of data, or unenforceable agreements. There is a gamut of authentication tools and methodologies that organizations use to authenticate customers. These include the use of passwords and personal identification numbers (PINs), digital certificates using a public key infrastructure (PKI), and physical devices such as smart cards or other types of tokens, database comparisons, and biometric identifiers. The level of risk protection afforded by each of these tools varies and is evolving as technology changes. Multi-factor authentication methods are more difficult to compromise than single factor systems. Properly designed and implemented multifactor authentication methods are more reliable indicators of authentication and stronger fraud deterrents. Broadly, the authentication methodologies can be classified, based on what a user knows (passwords, PINs), what a user has (smart card, magnetic card), and what a user is (fingerprint, retina, voiceprint, signature).There are various authentication approaches and techniques, from passwords to public keys.