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GCN Home > 05/05/03 issue

Biometrics gets better but still needs some work

By Carlos A. Soto, GCN Staff

Iris authentication stands out as the most secure biometric technique in use today

The biometrics market is maturing past its once-flimsy hardware and confusing software.

Two biometrics roundups ago, the GCN Lab could consistently fool a vocal-facial biometric duo by making animal noises at log-in.

This time, however, each of the six biometrics products we tested could do its job. Our hacking efforts and animal impersonations failed to break into any of the secured systems.

There’s still plenty of room for improvement, however. Some biometrics programs are less user-friendly than they should be, particularly when installed under newer operating systems. Microsoft Windows XP, for instance, produced some software conflicts.
Precise 100 MC
Image:
The Precise 100 MC reader and smart card worked together to offload processing from a PC.
We reviewed four of the six products with the Saf2000 software tool from SafLink Corp. of Bellevue, Wash. It could run multiple biometrics products under one graphical identification and authorization (GINA) interface. Priced at around $50 per client, Saf2000 was easy to install on a Pentium III test PC with 256M of RAM.

Because biometrics devices are only as strong as their operating system, we installed and tested each product in both Windows 2000 and XP environments.

Price and ease of setup were factors in determining the overall grades. But we gave more weight to reliability, security and logical interfaces. If biometrics software gets too complicated, the administrator can easily make installation errors that render the safeguard useless while conveying a false sense of security.

Work in tandem

We recommend agencies adopt biometrics not to replace passwords but rather to complement them. Most biometrics programs by default will admit users based on recognition alone. That’s like keeping the car doors locked but the windows open.

We suggest reversing such defaults and requiring users to type in passwords, especially where networks store sensitive data.

The most secure method we tested this year was iris authentication using the Panasonic Authenticam combined with Iridian Private ID iris-scanning software and KnoWho verification software.

More news on related topics: Biometrics, Product Reviews, Products Central