SECURING FIBRE CHANNEL FABRICS - Brocade

Identification and AuthenticationBiometricsBiometrics is the science and technology of measuring biological information.In IT, biometric technology is used as an authenticationmechanism to identify and verify the identity of individuals via:• Fingerprints• Palm prints• Hand geometry• Retinal scans• Iris scans• Facial patterns• Voice patternsThe following two biometric characteristics are different from the others,since they do not identify a body part, but rather analyze how anindividual performs a specific task:• Signature dynamics• Keyboard dynamicsSignature dynamics measure writing speed and pauses at differentpoints in the signature. Keyboard dynamics measure a person's typingpatterns, that is, how fast they can type, delays in typing two separateletters, and so on.One of the challenges of biometrics is balancing the error rate. Thereare two types of errors in biometrics: false positives and false negatives.A false positive (type I error) occurs when a biometric systemfalsely confirms a person's identity. A false negative (type II error)occurs when a biometric system fails to identify a person. Of the twotypes of errors, a false positive is more serious, as this could allow anunauthorized person to gain unauthorized access.On the one hand, when a biometric system generates too many falsenegatives, it becomes a source of frustration and nuisance to users ofthe system, since they are not identified and not authenticated whenthey should be. It may take several attempts to get a valid authenticationand users get annoyed with the entire system, not to mention thetime wasted and resulting loss of productivity. A false positive, on theother hand, could be a real problem when an invalid user is identifiedas a valid user and is authenticated. Biometric systems are tuned insuch a way to achieve a good balance between type I and type II errors.In some cases, a biometric system may favor false negatives if falsepositives are not tolerated.Securing Fibre Channel Fabrics 63