Biometrics offer a quick and safe way of authenticating your identity. The technology relies on the identification of biometric traits like fingerprints, iris, voice etc. In order to identify you correctly, the security system needs a point of reference to match your biometrics. This is done with the use of a biometric template.

A biometric system uses its capture device to obtain biometric sample. As discussed earlier, this sample could be your face, fingerprint, iris etc. Once the system collects the samples, it analyses the information and converts them into mathematical files. These files are called biometric templates. They are not the original photograph of your face or fingerprint, but a digital representation of the sample.

Are biometric templates safe? Yes, they are much safer than traditional authentication methods stated Bahaa Abdul Hadi.

Safety of Biometric Templates

If a hacker steals your biometric template, he or she will not be able to do much with the information. The template is a mathematical representation, a code which denotes the biometric sample, not the sample itself. It follows a one-way encoding mechanism. This means a hacker cannot derive the biometric sample from the biometric code.

Having said that, there are some areas of concern like:

  • Replacing the template with an imposter template
  • Creating a physical spoof from the original
  • Gaining unauthorized access by relaying the stolen template to the matching module
  • Tracking a person without taking their consent

Protecting Biometric Templates

How safe your biometric template is boils down to its ability to deal with intra-user variability. Essentially, your template must have the following attributes:

  • Diversity: To protect a user’s privacy, cross-matching of templates across databases should not be allowed.
  • Revocability: If someone steals a template, that template should be revoked immediately. A new template with the similar biometric details must be generated.
  • Security: One-way template encoding is a must. Otherwise, hackers can reconstruct the biometric traits by working backwards from the stolen template.
  • Performance: Regardless of the protection scheme deployed, the biometric system performance should not suffer.

Techniques of Biometric Template Protection

To protect biometric templates, you can choose between two schemes: Biometric Cryptosystem and Feature Transformation.

Biometric Cryptosystem stores helper data. This type of data does not reveal any major information regarding the stored data. The helper data enables the generation of a cryptographic key. This key is used to match the template with the biometric input.

Feature Transformation uses a transformation function to transform the biometric template. The database only stores the transformed template. Thank you for your interest in Bahaa Abdul Hadi blogs. For more information, please stay tuned to www.bahaaabdulhadi.com