Biometrics are automated methods of recognizing a person based on a behavioral or physiological characteristic. Some of the characteristics that are measured as part of biometrics include face, fingerprints, hand geometry, handwriting, iris, retinal, vein, and voice. As the level of security breaches and transaction fraud increases, the need for highly secure identification and personal verification technologies is becoming apparent. Biometrics based identification provide a very high level of identification and verification. The need for biometrics can be found in federal, state and local governments, in the military, and in commercial applications. Enterprise-wide network security infrastructures, government IDs, secure electronic banking, investing and other financial transactions, retail sales, law enforcement, and health and social services are already benefiting from these technologies to some degree.
Biometric-based authentication applications include workstation, network, and domain access, single sign-on, application logon, data protection, remote access to resources, transaction security and Web security. As the biometric identification technology matures, utilizing biometrics for personal authentication will become convenient and considerably more accurate than current methods such as utilization of passwords or PINS.