Pros and Cons of Fingerprint Recognition
Fingerprint recognition has become part of people’s daily lives as it is used to verify ownership of devices, such as mobile phones and laptops. Fingerprint used a software that extracts meaningful features from the fingerprint (Bhattachryya et al., 2009). Fingerprint recognition is preferred for its capability to promote security. Unlike passwords, fingerprints are not easy to fake. Additionally, fingerprints hardly change over a lifetime, meaning the data will be relevant despite the time it was taken.
Fingerprint recognition is also considered an easy method because users do not have to always remember like in the case of passwords. Moreover, unlike identity cards, fingerprints are always with an individual; therefore, chances of inconveniences, such as forgetting are minimal. Using fingerprints to verify identity facilitates accurate tracking organizations because they cannot be shared like in the case of passwords. The non-transferable nature of fingerprints provides security against theft of sensitive information.
Although fingerprints are unique in that there are no people with identical fingerprints, there are some vulnerabilities associated with using fingerprint recognition as a form of verification. Most fingerprint scanners, especially those on phones and laptops are small. This means that they can only read a small part of the finger, making the images easy to match other fingerprints. Therefore, fingerprint scanners can be vulnerable to other matches
Additionally, fingerprints can be hacked. Most fingerprint readers on Windows laptops and Android phones are not quality enough to meet the military standards for fingerprint recognition. This makes them vulnerable who can hack them by simply making a photocopy of the finger’s photo. Fingerprint are also not able to distinguish between fake and genuine traits when scanning fingerprints (Jain, Karthik, & Abhishek, 2008). This allows malicious people to feed the scanners with a spoof so that they can access a system.
References
Bhattachryya, D., Ranjan, R., Alisherov, F., Minkyu, C. (2009). Biometric authentication: A
review. International Journal of u- and e- Service Science and Technology 2(3)
Jain, A.K., Karthik, N., & Abhishek, N. (2008). Biometric template security. EURASIP Journal
on Advances in Signal Processing, 113.