Paper Example on Biometrics Systems

Introduction

Recent technological developments increasingly threaten the privacy and security of private information. The use of passwords in the protection of computer and information systems has not succeeded is protecting personal information. The use of personal details such as financial accounts, own address and birth details have become common, hence, avoiding their use is almost impossible. Various organizations worldwide are implementing the use of biometric systems that reinforce the security of both identity and authentication process using unique human identification features. Irrespective of the latest advances in technology concerning the use of biometrics systems, the level of safety of personal information is not guaranteed because of illegal access, function failure, and mismanagement of sensitive data.

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Biometric Systems and Application

A biometric system uses information about an individual trait and relies heavily on particular data about unusual biological characteristics for the system to work efficiently. Each person is unique regarding his or her attributes. The personal uniqueness is used to seek authentication of application to access a specific security system, upon which the system allows operator entry. The system operates based on three principles that include finding the uniqueness characteristic through identification of sound, image scanning, creating a template of the information corresponding the information acquired with the stored data. Present technologies biometric systems include fingerprint scanning, hand and face geometry, iris scanning and speech recognition (Nappi et al., 2014). Using these personal attributes, the system is precise in recognizing individuals to access a secured system. Biometric system is used in organizations including banks, airports, selected federal facilities, research, and medical institutions to boost security to access. The modern domestic items including safes and phones contain features that enhance security such as fingerprint scanners and speech recognition.

Privacy and Ethical Issues

Despite increasing benefits regarding the use of biometric systems, they expose personal information that can threaten the security of personal information. When personal information is disposed to mismanagement in ways that threaten an individual's confidentiality. Third party agencies including security departments can acquire the data without approval or knowledge of the appropriate credentials. For instance, security officers can obtain biometric data such as fingerprints and smart cards for investigation purposes of tracking bank transactions and travel routes. Moreover, availability techniques used to duplicate private information in the biometric systems makes original owners subject to harassment and discrimination by security officers. Criminals can obtain fingerprints from an office pen or glass, trick security system with a recorded speech of the owner and penetrate security systems.

Private information is stored in biometric systems subject to security since advertisers, marketers, and researchers may use such information for their gains. Occasionally, persons entrusted with the systems information might sell personal details to advertisers and marketer including emails and telephone numbers, hence assisting function creep. Such instances are common in healthcare settings where patient's population health information planned for a specific study is used in other research areas that the authorization did not extend.

Individuals do not have control on the use of their information in biometric systems including use of facial and speech recognition, fingerprints and any other personal information. It is not possible for a person to dictate the methods and extent of their information. One biometric system generates the templates; it is the responsibility of the owners of the system to decide on how to use the data.

Privacy and ethical issues surrounding the biometric systems affects both individuals and organizations. Mismanagement of employee information can result in harassment by criminals and cyberbullying. Exposure of financial information can result in robbery and con artistry. Functional creep threatens the privacy of a patient when private information is shared without their consent or authorization. Medical records are sensitive, and exposure might result in humiliation and stigmatization of the patient's condition (Punithavathi & Subbiah, 2017).

Measures To Prevent the Biometrics Privacy and Ethical Issues

Presently, organizations have suggested on use of information used in biometric systems to be locally saved in cards templates instead of a centralized organization database (Rattani, 2015). Personal information stored should be in templates as opposed to images, images are more accessible to manipulate and falsify. It is hard to decrypt a template, unlike images that can easily be edited using the conventional software. This will reduce the functional creep since physical data in the systems exposes it further to risks, hence, preventing sharing of personal information to third party individuals such as advertisers and marketers.

In contemporary society, the Privacy Act of 1974Provides a framework to inhibit misuse of information in biometric systems to permit reviewing and oversight practices (Mirjalili & Ross, 2017). Moreover, the protocols check and documents each access into the system, and can identify sharing if private information. Organizations have established back up of biometric systems in case of unauthorized access or system failures, which contains a secondary security layout.

Biometric systems show high-security levels of personal information that has resulted in broad adoption among various organizations worldwide. Nonetheless, because of the systems' capability to handle sensitive information, there exists confidentiality and moral concerns regarding its implementation. Though modern technologies have innovated, ways to address privacy issues, the technology and infrastructure recurred is not available to all organizations.

References

Mirjalili, V., & Ross, A. (2017). Soft biometric privacy: Retaining biometric utility of face images while perturbing gender. 2017 IEEE International Joint Conference on Biometrics (IJCB). doi:10.1109/btas.2017.8272743

Nappi, M., Piuri, V., Tan, T., & Zhang, D. (2014). Introduction to the Special Section on Biometric Systems and Applications. IEEE Transactions on Systems, Man & Cybernetics. Systems, 44(11), 1457-1460. doi:10.1109/TSMC.2014.2337851

Punithavathi, P., & Subbiah, G. (2017). Can cancellable biometrics preserve privacy? Biometric Technology Today, 2017(7), 8-11. doi:10.1016/s0969-4765(17)30138-8

Rattani, A. (2015). Introduction to Adaptive Biometric Systems. Adaptive Biometric Systems Advances in Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition, 1-8. doi:10.1007/978-3-319-24865-3_1