GSN_Oct_YUMPU

Convy on Net-Centric Security
The future of identity management –
on the tips of your fingers
By John Convy, Convy Associates, Washington, DC
Identity management remains an ongoing
challenge for the security industry.
Any number of technologies promise
quick, easy access for authorized
individuals, including card keys, biometric
scans, facial recognition, and
voice recognition. However, issues
with accuracy, false positives, and
false negatives continue to frustrate
security people.
One of the world’s oldest identity
management methods, ironically,
may still be the best. This uses something
each of us carries with us everywhere,
and is almost perfectly unique
to every individual – our fingerprints.
Forensic Science in Literature
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle popularized
fingerprint use as a forensic tool in a
Sherlock Holmes story published in
1890. The first documented application
of fingerprint technology came
from an Argentine police official
around 1892.
Soon after that, fingerprints became
the backbone of many police
operations. Analog images can be
printed and shared easily. Scans can
be turned into digital codes that serve
as unique identifiers that can operate
as both a user ID and password. This
application of biometrics – the use
of physical characteristics for digital
authentication – has been one of the
key goals for the security industry for
many years.
Older fingerprint scanner technologies
had their limitations. They
could not record sufficient information
from a finger to be reliable or
generate a sufficiently sophisticated
numerical code that was fully secure.
Dirty sensors or wet fingertips caused
readability issues. Slow analytics took
too long to validate identity, and some
systems could be fooled by something
as simple as an analog copy of a fingerprint
printed on a clear piece of
plastic.
According to Gary Jones, Director
of Biometric Access and Time Solutions
at MorphoTrak LLC, those legacy
scanners are just as obsolete as the
paper fingerprints in old police ledgers.
Today’s fingerprint sensors are
fast, accurate, and reliable.
“We call this frictionless access,”
Jones told me. “The difference is that
we now know how to capture fingerprints
in 3D. Once you have the whole
fingerprint, including the curvature,
you can capture more information.
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And that extra information means incredible
accuracy. We can now come
very close to the rolled capture from
ink-and-paper, even with a partial
scan. And we can process that information
very rapidly.”
Always Available, Rarely Lost
Another key element in the evolution
of fingerprint scanning has been the
development of sensors that automatically
account for distorted scans, wet
fingers, or dirty surfaces. These newer
technologies operate under challenging
conditions that confused older
systems, and occasionally rendered
them inoperable.
Speed is another major improvement,
according to MorphoTrak’s
Gary Jones.
“Wave your hand – left or right –
it does not matter. We now see what
we need to see as your fingers move
through the scanning area. It’s like
placing your finger on an older sensor
10, 12, or 15 times – except you
only have to wave once, and you don’t
have to place your finger down on a
surface.”
The result is an advanced identity
management solution that can move
large numbers of people through