Biometrics

                                      Biometrics

Biometrics is the measurement and statistical analysis of people’s unique physical and behavioral characteristics. The technology is mainly used for identification and access control, or for identifying individuals who are under surveillance. The basic premise of biometric authentication is that every person can be accurately identified by his or her intrinsic physical or behavioral traits.

The term biometrics is derived from the Greek words bio meaning life and metric meaning to measure. 

Types of biometrics

The two main types of biometric identifiers depend on either physiological characteristics or behavioral characteristics.

Physiological identifiers relate to the composition of the user being authenticated and include facial recognition, fingerprints, finger geometry (the size and position of fingers), iris recognition, vein recognition, retina scanning, voice recognition and DNA matching.

Behavioral identifiers include the unique ways in which individuals act, including recognition of typing patterns, walking gait and other gestures. Some of these behavioral identifiers can be used to provide continuous authentication instead of a single one-off authentication check.