Biometric Security: Are Inexpensive Biometric Devices Reliable Enough to Gain Wide-Spread Security Usage?

The ever growing need for security in today\u27 s world requires exploring the feasibility of various security methods to ensure the safety of the world\u27s population. With the tremendous growth of technology, e-commerce, and business globalization, society implements new methods to try to battle security problems. Technology advances has resulted in a number of inexpensive biometric devices to the marketplace. Two questions surface regarding this devices-are they reliable enough for general usage and will people be willing to use them? This research conducted a repeated design experiment to determine the effectiveness of four inexpensive biometric devices-three fingerprint readers and an iris scanner. Further, a questionnaire was designed to gain insights to the views of subjects using these biometric devices. On average, all the devices performed well for identification purposes-the fingerprint readers performing better than the iris scanner. The questionnaire revealed that most people prefer fingerprint readers over that of iris scanners and that although 60% of the people surveyed had heard of biometrics, only 21% of those surveyed had ever used a biometric device. The public does not feel that these devices provide complete security, but does provide a reliable means for identification