Biometrics (or biometric authentication) refers to the identification of humans by their characteristics or traits. Computer science, biometrics to be specific, is used as a form of identification and access control(exerting control over who can interact with a resource). Examples are: one’s voice, DNA, hand print or behavior etc.
Fujitsu has developed a contactless palm vein pattern authentication technology that uses vascular patterns as personal identification data. Since the authentication data exists inside the body, it can be considered as more secure because it is difficult to forge.
Suruga Bank, The Bank of Tokyo-Mitsubishi, The Hiroshima Bank and The Bank of IKEDA started customer confirmation using palm vein pattern authentication in July 2004, October 2004, April 2005 and June 2005, respectively. Additionally, in response to the “Act for the Protection of Personal Information,” which came into effect in April 2005, an increasing number of financial institutions, including The Nanto Bank, had adopted this technology.
The usual authentication by using passwords and PIN numbers can easily be stolen or hacked, while biometric authentication is strictly unique to the user, and the palm vein technology, as it depends on the internal body data, is a lot more secure.
Palm vein authentication: In this technology palm vein patterns are compared with those stored in the database, each individual will be having unique vascular patterns as researched by Fujitsu.
The palm is illuminated by near infrared rays, deoxidized hemoglobin(those which have released the O2 content and return to heart through veins) absorbs this light and appear as a black pattern, this is then extracted for image processing and registered. The vein pattern of the person being authenticated is then verified against the preregistered pattern.
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