How Does Biometric Authentication Work?
Biometric authentication is a way to verify identities using physical or behavioral characteristics that cannot be changed. It is based on the principle "something the user is", for example fingerprint, facial, iris pattern, voice recognition, signature, or palm print.
To set up a user account, the user must choose one or more physical or behavioral characteristics which are then stored in the database. If the user later wants to access the system, the users' characteristics are compared with the stored ones. A successful matching or authentication of both data allows the user to login. As the characteristics cannot be changed or signed over to third parties, such a biometric authentication is generally a more secure authentication method than the classical username-password authentication. Everything is based on the uniqueness of the characteristics of an individual user. Unlike passwords, biometric data cannot easily be stolen, lost, or compromised. Biometrics is a faster, easier to scale as well as more accurate authentication method. However, there are also some drawbacks, such as cost, potential change of biometric characteristics that can lead to lock-out (if no biometric reset exist) and often concerns for data privacy (if cloud provider stores the personal characteristics).
