Secure Fingerprint Matching with External Registration

Biometrics-based authentication systems offer enhanced security and user convenience compared to traditional token-based (e.g., ID card) and knowledge-based (e.g., password) systems. However, the increased deployment of biometric systems in several commercial and government applications has raised questions about the security of the biometric system itself. Since the biometric traits of a user cannot be replaced if compromised, it is imperative that these systems are suitably secure in order to protect the privacy of the user as well as the integrity of the overall system. In this paper, we first investigate several methods that have been proposed in the literature to increase the security of the templates residing in a biometric system. We next propose a novel fingerprint matching architecture for resource-constrained devices (e.g., smart cards) that ensures the security of the minutiae templates present in the device. Experimental results describing the impact of several system parameters on the matching performance as well as the computational and storage costs are provided. The proposed architecture is shown to enhance the security of the minutiae templates while maintaining the overall matching performance of the system.