Cybersecurity remains a hot-button topic as companies in the healthcare and industrial sectors continue to look for better ways to protect their data and devices. Along with better data encryption and training, a critical front for improvement is better access control, i.e., managing who can access a device and the information stored on it. For many businesses, this access control takes the form of biometrics.
Biometrics in cybersecurity is the practice of verifying a user's identity by examining their unique biological traits. These traits, such as their fingerprint, iris, and facial structure, are wholly unique and extremely difficult to replicate, making them ideal for access control cybersecurity.
Types of Biometrics
Biometrics comes in several forms, each targeting a different aspect of an individual for verification.
- Biological biometrics: These traits are determined at a genetic and molecular level, such as an individual's DNA. These are the most extreme and typically invasive to measure, as they require obtaining the subject's body fluids or tissues. For this reason, these are typically only used in extreme cases, such as criminal investigations.
- Morphological biometrics: These are traits associated with the structure of the subject's body, such as their eyes, fingerprints, and facial shape. Both DNA and life experiences determine these traits and are some of the most common aspects analyzed for security.
- Behavioral biometrics: These are behavioral patterns unique to the individual, such as their speaking voice, walking pace, and even typing habits. Of these, voice recognition is the most commonly used in cybersecurity.
The Most Common Biometrics in Cybersecurity
One advantage of using biometrics in cybersecurity is that they can be implemented using several different methods. The following are some of the most common:
Voice Recognition
Voice recognition technology analyzes the sound, rhythm, and pattern of an individual's voice. Perfectly replicating someone's voice is actually incredibly difficult, as it is partially determined by the size and shape of an individual's mouth and throat. Voice recognition software is trained on an individual's voice by taking one or more samples and creating a digital template or "voiceprint," in the same vein as a fingerprint.
Fingerprints
Every individual's fingerprint is unique, thanks to DNA and life experiences. This makes it an excellent way to verify one's identity. Additionally, fingerprint-scanning software can run off conventional touchscreen technology, making it easy to implement in everything from consumer smartphones to industrial-grade tablets.
Fingerprint scanners analyze the patterns in an individual's fingerprint, the ridges on the skin, and smaller details within those ridges. Scanners capture the print, convert the physical pattern into a digital format, and then compare it to stored records to verify the user's identity.
Scanners come in multiple types, including optical (which takes a picture of the fingerprint), capacitive (which uses electrical currents to map fingerprints), and thermal (which detects subtle temperature differences between the ridges and valleys of the fingerprint).
Eye Scanning (Iris and Retinal)
Like fingerprints, an individual's iris and retina are unique and change very little throughout life. Outside of accidents or certain diseases, your eyes will remain the same from infancy to seniority.
For this reason, scanning an individual's iris (the ring of color in their eyes) and their retina (the dark spot at the center) are both viable options for biometric cybersecurity.
In retinal scanning, a beam of low-energy infrared light is projected into an individual's eye as they look into the scanner. The beam sweeps over the individual's retina and measures how much light is reflected back at it. Because retinal blood vessels absorb more light than the rest of the eye, they can be traced and identified as matching the authorized individual or not.
Iris scans work similarly, where infrared cameras compare high-detail images of the subject's iris to saved entries on the database. The extreme level of detail in these images, combined with the uniqueness of each person's irises, makes fooling the system incredibly difficult.
Facial Structure
A facial structure scan measures the physical dimensions of a person's face, focusing on aspects that cannot be easily changed by cosmetics or surgery. For example, programs can measure aspects like the difference between a person's eyes, the distance from the forehead to the chin, the depth of eyesockets, the shape of cheekbones, and more. Because these factors often depend on an individual's bone structure, they are nearly impossible to alter or imitate.
Depending on the security requirements, companies may integrate one or more types of biometrics into their cybersecurity efforts. A particularly high-security environment might require both a fingerprint and a retinal scan performed on the same industrial panel PC, for example.
Implement Biometric Security with Cybernet Manufacturing
As the need for strong cybersecurity and access control methods becomes increasingly pressing, implementing effective biometric measures will only become more prevalent.
If your company wants to implement industrial or medical computers with biometric security features, contact the team at Cybernet Manufacturing. Our computers are fully compatible with a range of biometric security measures and a suite of other cybersecurity features.
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