The University of Saskatchewan Department of Computer Science Technical Report # 2012 - 02

Access control and authentication have become very common activities at this modern information age to ensure information security and authorized access to the information. Traditional authentication mechanisms require the users to remember secret words or phrase, or carry identification documents like passports, smart cards, etc. Biometric authentication relieves the users from the pain of remembering numerous secret passwords. People tend to believe that biometrics would provide better security in authentication systems, and such biometric authentication systems are being developed for use in areas like border security, airport security, banking, and so on. However, there are security issues about biometric authentication, which must be taken into consideration in developing and deploying biometric authentication systems for massive use. Based on review of existing literature in the area, this paper presents security concerns about biometric authentication and its implementations. The security issues pointed out in this paper reveals areas of further research in biometric authentication, and also will help to develop more reliable biometric authentication systems for ubiquitous use.