Unit 9 Project: Biometrics and the Future

Biometrics and the Future An identity is stolen every second; at least ten were stolen in the time it took to read this sentence (Chaflin, 2005). On a daily basis people all over the world are subject to navigating the ins and outs of life depending on an assortment of cards and passwords that confirms their identity. If they were to lose their bank card an ATM will refuse to give them money. Forget a simple password, and their own computer will not respond to them. By far the worse outcome is to allow their cards or passwords to fall into the wrong hands, and what was intended to be a security measure can become the tool of fraud or identity theft. The time for a more secure form of identification is upon us. A potential solution can be seen in the form of biometric identification.
To understand the benefits of biometric identification one must understand the concept of biometrics. By combining the Greek words “bio”, which stands for “life”, and “metrics”, which stands for “measure”, a person can produce the term “biometrics” or “life measurements” (Woodward, 2003). Everyone has at least, once in their lives seen a movie where a villain or hero accesses a secret area by the use of a handprint or voice command. What was considered science fiction many years ago, today biometrics is being used in a variety of ways and the average person may not even be aware of it. To begin to grasp the concept and to truly understand biometrics at the most basic level, all one has to do is to picture someone special to them in their mind. A human can specifically distinguish another human by remembering there eye color, hair color, the shape of their nose, a facial abnormality like a mole, or any combination of facial features (Vacca, 2007). While the human mind is capable of remembering the physical characteristics of several humans,