May 09, 2020

What's your take on biometric authentication?

What's the FAR and FRR of the biometric system you are considering? What's the CER?

FAR = False Acceptance Rate or when someone who is not an authorized user is granted access.
FRR = False Reject Rate or when a authorized user is rejected.
The CER = Crossover Error Rate which is the point at which the FAR and FRR meet.

You want your FAR and FRR to both be very low. If your FAR was 1 time in every 100 unique authorizations that would be 1%. Is that acceptable given the number of people using the system? You should try to account in your design for a FAR event (unauthorized user with access) and have some other protection in place; so that leads to a MFA (multi factor authorization) scheme.

FRR is what will truly frustrate your authorized users because they will be turned away and unable to access the system. That drives up the cost of operating the system since some additional person will have to be standing by to allow the rejected but authorized person access.

Another consideration for biometric systems is your user community and the design. Does the biometric system require touch? How's that work given the pandemic? If the biometric involve a camera; at what height is the camera set? Will it work for a person in a wheel chair?