My Technology

Biometric security systems' technology has actually been around for centuries, in some of its incarnations. It's been noted, for example, that the Chinese used to stamp young children's hands in order to identify them, and that occurred in the 14th century. Today, a similar identifying "stamp" method is still used in hospitals, whereby babies' footprints are taken as an identifying measure after birth.

Although biometric security systems and in particular biometric access control are relatively new concepts, you can see that it's got its roots in history. Scotland Yard official Richard Edward Henry first developed fingerprinting as a means to identify and keep track of criminals, and to identify when criminals had been at a particular crime scene; by taking suspected criminals' fingerprints, one could then match those fingerprints to unknown fingerprints found at a crime scene, and catch the culprit(s) involved in that crime. With few modifications, his methods are still used today.

Biometric security systems and biometric access control really came into development with the advent of newer technologies that allowed quick identification and cataloging of individual characteristics. This has meant there's been a seismic shift in how security protection and access has occurred.

Biometric systems restrict entrance to a physical property to unauthorized users, give access to authorized users (sometimes to disparate locations within a physical property), and keep track of entries and exits from the property. This protects businesses security, because only those people who should be on a property or within particular areas of that property can gain entry. It has distinct advantages over older systems like key lock entry, because it can be customized endlessly; it can give or prevent users access to particular areas with a simple coding and recoding through biometric access control. If an employee must leave the business for whatever reason, his or her access can be revoked without jeopardizing or having to change over the entire system.

How biometric security systems work

These systems work via biometric access control. A reader or scanner captures information, such as a fingerprint or iris configuration. It checks that information against previously recorded characteristics (usually stored on a server and accessed via software). If the information presented by the subsequent scan matches that of the records, the individual is granted access. If it does not, the individual is denied access. The most common type of biometric access control used for physical locations is fingerprint identification, which is commonly used in high-security government jobs, etc.

Additional information

With today's biometric security systems, there are several ways to identify individuals needing access to particular areas within a physical or virtual location. In addition, biometric security systems have also provided layers of protection to guard against "remote" victim crimes, like identity theft.

These security systems can help prevent against identity theft because they can track how a particular user, for example, generally uses a credit card. If that credit card's spending patterns suddenly change significantly, the biometric security systems a financial institution has in place will catch these irregularities, and will contact the card user to make sure that in fact, he or she has indeed used the card. This is a very effective way to catch unauthorized usage or access to accounts, so that identity theft and other types of similar crimes are stopped before they can do much damage.           

MF