Tracking Children Using Biometric Authentication

A company focusing on the advancement of electronic automation, identification and tracking products and services, known as BioEnable Technologies Pvt. Ltd. recently launched a new product in Pune, India. Completely based upon cloud networking and known as Child ID Solutions, the system has been introduced to hospitals in order to keep track of children.

“There are lot of cases of child theft and newborn child swaps by mistake or intentional. Most of them are either not reported or are never known to parents.” -Mr. Pradeep Bhatia, MD, BioEnable Technologies Pvt. Ltd.

Newborn swapping, child theft and female-child killing have been seemingly common issues throughout India - well, regardless of how common they may be, their severities are what sparked BioEnable's idea. BioEnable has created a tool that uses biometric authentication to keep record of each child, and combines this information with that of his/her parent. Essentially, when each child is born, his/her 10-print fingerprint is scanned and stored into Child ID Solutions along with the demographic and biometric information of his/her parent(s). 

This process will be required from every hospital with the goals of: reducing newborn swapping incidents, reducing child thefts and tracking the parents of a lost child.

The system will aid in identifying/reporting these crimes to the respective parent(s) at a sooner time. Ideally, BioEnable hopes to later use Child ID Solutions for broader purposes; to reduce the amount of female infanticide in hospitals and nursing facilities.

Ideally, the program is expected to be later integrated with healthcare systems for children.

However, this brings about the issue of those parents who put up their children for adoption, wishing that their children never know the parents' true identities. Let's say that Mary gives birth to her son John and immediately (or even a year later) puts him up for adoption...If 10 years later, he is found after having been kidnapped, will he be returned to Mary? His mother who never wanted her identity revealed to John?

Of course in America, it may be easier to keep track of adoptions. But in a third world country, where they are not as technologically advanced as the US, could this be an issue?

Apple Keeps Fingerprint Scanning all to Itself

Quite obviously, Apple is growing as an industry as its iPhones and iPads are becoming more and more commonly used in the workplace. Due to these tools’ positions in the workplace, security is becoming a critical issue. Thus, Apple has looked into biometric authentication and in July, 2012, bought out AuthenTec, a mobile security company, for $356 million. AuthenTec designs fingerprint sensors and other security products for mobile devices, which can aid in avoiding Apple’s security issues: criminals and malicious software attacks.

According to Standard & Poor’s Capital IQ, this is Apple’s second largest acquisition, after the $400 million purchase of Anobit Technologies last year. In which case, we can infer that fingerprint scanning will be seen in future iPhones. In fact, it has been predicted that the “iPhone 6” (or whatever Apple chooses to name it) will offer fingerprint scanning features.

No surprise here: Apple is becoming greedy. AuthenTec recently announced that it will no longer be offering its work to any company other than Apple come 2013. Its current customers who will be essentially cut within the next year include Samsung, HP, Dell, Lenovo and Fujitsu.

However, is this making Apple more and more of a monopoly? AuthenTec is one of the best when it comes to fingerprint scanning technology, and will now only be available to Apple. In a sense, this forces other companies to worsen as it also sort of forces customers to purchase Apple products – customers who wish for better security, that is.

Furthermore, is biometric authentication really spreading or is it just that its users are changing, from less powerful companies (Samsung, Lenovo, etc) to a more powerful one like Apple? And if Apple becomes the only phone to offer such security applications in the market, will other companies cease to exist due to even more increased popularity in the iPhone?

AuthenTec Ditches Non-Apple Customers

Implementation of Biometric Authentication: Iris Scanning in Palestine and Jordan Banks

In 2010, Cairo Amman Bank (CAB), a bank found throughout Palestine and Jordan, decided to invest in biometric authentication through a company named IrisGuard Inc. The bank implemented a biometric solution known as EyeBank, allowing for customers to utilize their banking accounts more easily and safely via iris scanning.

Although biometric authentication’s ubiquity had been previously claimed to “make it hard for dramatic changes in security”, we see otherwise in CAB’s recent EyeBank deployment. Or rather, we see that CAB overlooked such laboriousness and was significantly successful, in which case making this implementation worthy. Currently, CAB has installed over 500 iris cameras, and has enrolled more than 100,000 ban customers. Consequently, the bank users have expressed their appreciation for EyeBank via an independent banking survey. It showed over 94 percent customer satisfaction with IrisGuard EyeBank ATM authentication, and over 95 percent of users anticipated increasing IrisGuard service usage rates at ATMs. (Mayhew, 2012) Furthermore, 95.2 percent want to continue using EyeBank in the future. (Mayhew, 2012)

Thus, although spreading biometric authentication world-wide, or even nation-wide for a company may seem arduous, its results are meritorious according to customer satisfaction.

EyeBank is now at all Cairo Amman Bank customer service desks, teller stations and ATMs throughout the two countries. In addition to increasing security by negating the need for a word-password, EyeBank also adds ease to banking. Rather than swiping a debit card through an ATM machine and typing in a pin number, EyeBank users only need to scan their eye. This obviously allows for increased ease and efficiency, but it also eliminates the stressful occurrence of losing a debit card or having one stolen.

Additionally, rather than needing a key or User ID for an employer to enter a CAB building, he/she only needs to scan his/her eye. In which case, EyeBank eliminates the need for the key, User ID, ATM card, pin number and traditional password.

Today's Passwords Becoming too Accessible: A reason to up security, or to avoid posting even more private information?

"In June, LinkedIn announced that 6.4 million passwords were leaked after an alleged hack on its system.

In May, almost 59,000 Twitter username and passwords were posted online by a hacker…

Last month the usernames and passwords of members of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) were made available on its server for at least a month." (Connelly, 2012)

Given these issues (which are three of many more) where online security seems to have failed, engineers as well as the general public are finding it apparent that a new form of the traditional “password” must be put in use. Due to its uniqueness, biometric authentication has been researched. Undoubtedly, implementing such a system avoids the common error of “forgetting” a password, which consequently makes it even easier for hackers to, indeed, hack.

In an NBC article written by Bob Sullivan, Why your next ‘Passw0rd’ might not be a Password, he explains the dangers of the commonly found “Forgot your password?” button. This option commonly puts the color of your first car and the name of your pet - both, as described by Sullivan, easily determined from Facebook - between your data and hackers.

Furthermore, even without having to select the Forgot Password option, hackers can easily guess passwords without additional aid. Aside from the obvious access to passwords due to their leakage on many sites, as described earlier in this article, hackers can determine passwords because computer users commonly use “easy” ones. A recent study of debit card PINs shows that 1 of every 10 users pick “1234” as their password. Additionally, an analysis of LinkedIn passwords found that the most common phrase found in its passwords was “link”.

In which case, we can consider a much more unique sort of “password” that does not allow for a “Forgot Password?” button – not yet at least: biometric authentication. However, while biometric authentication does allow for stronger security, it is also very hard to sell the idea to users. In a recent article written by Claire Connelly, Theft of fingerprints easier than cutting off a finger, security experts warn, she argues the point that due to the ease of password leakage as recently seen by LinkedIn and Twitter, we should by no means trust such companies with information far more important than “link1234” or “My dog’s name is Sammy”. She explains, ''A password I can change in five minutes, but if there is a breach and someone does steal my biometric data, how do you get a new retina?''

And at the point where a criminal does find one's DNA information from hacking a biometric authentication program, which is inevitable, wouldn't it later become more difficult for authorities to distinguish between the real you and the criminal using your DNA? In fact, if the purpose of using such features is that they are so distinctly unique to us, then how would it even be possible for an authority to determine this?

Theft of fingerprints easier than cutting off a finger
Why your next 'Passw0rd' might not be a Password