Amit Kumar Trivedi
The developments in electronic circuit manufacturing technology made it feasible to have very compact yet powerful mobile devices. Society is more connected using these mobile electronic devices with fast and advanced communication technologies. In this electronically advanced society, the card or token-based person identification or authentication is no more trusted. Information of card can be stolen and a duplicate card can be made very easily, which is exactly same as the original one. PIN or password can be easily guessed knowing some information about the person that he/she shares on social network. Even the secret password or card can be shared, so they cannot provide security against repudiation. The use of idiosyncratic anatomical or behavioural characteristics, called biometric identifiers or attributes or properties or traits for establishing the individuality of a person for either identification or verification is called Biometric recognition or simply Biometrics. Biometric traits cannot be shared or stolen or duplicated. They are intrinsic property of an individual’s physical body or behaviour and inseparable from the individual. Establishing the identity of a person both positive and negative from his/her physical body or behaviour is a very powerful tool for identity management and have immense potential. All these make biometrics a very appealing pattern recognition research problem, but it should be used carefully for the benefit of the society and reduce the identity fraud. A person’s identity needs to be verified or established at a number of places. Like, is he or she authorised to enter some privilege facility, or for accessing privilege information or to check if the person is wanted for some crime. Sometimes, it is required to check whether a person has already availed a social service or not, or whether is he or she is eligible to avail the services. Unreliable answers of these questions may lead to some financial or non-financial loss. Biometric identifiers provide a reliable answer to such questions as it cannot be easily forged, shared or lost as compared to traditional to- ken or knowledge based identifiers. Biometric recognition is more convenient, secure, and efficient; hence has better accountability.
