TO: Prof. Jason Ellis
FROM: Stephan Dominique
DATE: 10/29/20
SUBJECT: Expanded Definition of Biometrics
Introduction
The purpose of this document is to expand the definition of the term ‘Biometrics’, which is very popular in today’s advancing technological world. If you use a smartphone today that uses any fingerprint or face scanning technology to unlock your phone, biometrics is being used. I will cover this topic by first defining the term and the history behind it, followed by the context of the word as well as the working definition.
Definitions
According to Meng-Hsuan Fu, Biometrics is defined as “Using human physical characteristics including finger vein, iris, voice, and facial features for recognition.” (Fu, M., 2020, p.2). This means, for example, if a crime were to be committed and the police found the fingerprints of the criminal to later identify the person, biometrics is being used in this instance. To understand biometrics, one must break everything down by first looking at the term “anthropometry”, which is the study of the specific measurements of the human body. Biometrics stems from this as without Anthropometry, biometrics simply does not exist. Anthropometry involves analyzing the unique properties of humans that make each person different from the next. Going even further, the founder of this study is Alphonse Bertillon, who also was the first person to identify a criminal through their fingerprints as well as being the inventor of what is known now as the mugshot, another form of biometrics. “Biometrics are physical or behavioral human characteristics that can be used to digitally identify a person to grant access to systems, devices or data.” (Korolov, M., 2020). Essentially, biometrics means that no one else can have access to what you have access to. If there is a password required for something, your body is the key to unlock it and only you can unlock it. These two definitions are similar for the fact that they both discuss that biometrics involves using the human body to identify a particular person. The difference in these two definitions, however, are that Fu speaks on biometrics in a general sense. The second author’s definition goes more into biometric security, applying the first definition into security, which is a form of security which is hard to crack.
Context
The first contextual appearance is where Fu states that “Biometrics is becoming more widely used in access-control systems for homes, offices, buildings, government facilities, and libraries. For these systems, the fingerprint is one of the most commonly used biometrics. Users place their finger on a read device, usually a touch panel. This method ensures a unique identity, is easy to use and widely accepted, boasts a high scan speed, and is difficult to falsify. However, its effectiveness is influenced by the age of the user and the presence of moisture, wounds, dust, or particles on the finger, in addition to the concern for hygiene because of the use of touch devices” (Fu, M., 2020, p.5). In this quote, Fu describes the use of biometrics and where it is popularly used with the benefits of the term as the technology is being utilized more and more in typical workplaces because of its ease and efficiency but also the cons of it as well. The second contextual appearance is where Korolov mentions “62 percent of companies are already using biometric authentication, and another 24 percent plan to deploy it within the next two years.” (Korolov, M., 2020). She is essentially saying that because biometrics are highly effective, companies are quickly becoming on board as their information is tightly guarded.
Working Definition
Biometrics is extremely popular and as such, will require workers in the I.T. field to aid in installing, maintaining, and fixing such technologies. Biometrics is relevant to my career because I plan to start off on the technical side which includes being a field service technician. This job consists of going through workplaces and maintaining various things such as a fingerprint scanner. The knowledge of handling such equipment will probably become more mandatory as time goes on and more companies switch to biometric security.
References
Meng-Hsuan Fu. (2020). Integrated Technologies of Blockchain and Biometrics Based on Wireless Sensor Network for Library Management. Information Technology & Libraries, 39(3), 1–13. https://doi-org.citytech.ezproxy.cuny.edu/10.6017/ital.v39i3.11883
Korolov, Maria. “What Is Biometrics? 10 Physical and Behavioral Identifiers.” CSO Online, CSO, 12 Feb. 2019, www.csoonline.com/article/3339565/what-is-biometrics-and-why-collecting-biometric-data-is-risky.html.
