INTRODUCTION

Information security is concerned with the assurance of confidentiality, integrity and availability of information in all forms. There are many tools and techniques that can support the management of information security. But system based on biometric has evolved to support some aspects of information security. Biometric authentication supports the facet of identification, authentication and non-repudiation in information security (Alfred, 2013).

Biometrics (ancient Greek: bios ="life", metron ="measure") refers to two very different fields of study and application. The first, which is the older and is used in biological studies, including forestry, is the collection, synthesis, analysis and management of quantitative data on biological communities such as forests. Biometrics in reference to biological sciences has been studied and applied for several generations and is somewhat simply viewed as "biological statistics"(Jain, et al., 2016).

Authentication is the act of establishing or confirming something (or someone) as authentic, that is that claims made by or about the thing are true. A short overview in this field can be divided into three parts and they are Past, Present and Future (Alfred, 2013).

Biometric based authentication has grown in popularity as a way to provide personal identification. Person’s identification is crucially significant in many applications and the hike in credit card fraud and identity theft in recent years indicates that this is an issue of major concern in wider society. Individual passwords, pin identification or even token based arrangement all have deficiencies that restrict their applicability in a widely-networked society. Biometric is used to identify the identity of an input sample when compared to a template, used in cases to identify specific people by certain characteristics. Possession-based: using one specific "token" such as a security tag or a card and knowledge-based: the use of a code or password. Standard validation systems often use multiple inputs of samples for sufficient validation, such as particular characteristics of the sample. This intends to enhance security as multiple different samples are required such as security tags and codes and sample dimensions. So, the advantage claimed by biometric authentication is that they can establish an unbreakable one-to-one correspondence between an individual and a piece of data (Alfred, 2013).

In this seminar paper, a detailed survey on Biometric Based Authentication and its Application is presented and it is expected that this seminar work will definitely provide a concrete overview on the past, present and future aspects in this field.

 

HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE OF BIOMETRIC AUTHENTICATION

European explorer Joao de Barros recorded the first known example of fingerprinting, which is a form of biometrics, in China during the 14th century. Chinese merchants used ink to take children's fingerprints for identification purposes.

 

In 1890, Alphonse Bertillon studied body mechanics and measurements to help in identifying criminals. The police used his method, the Bertillonage method, until it falsely identified some subjects. The Bertillonage method was quickly abandoned in favor of fingerprinting, brought back into use by Richard Edward Henry of Scotland Yard (Abiyev and Altunkaya, 2015).

Karl Pearson, an applied mathematician studied biometric research early in the 20^th century at University College of London. He made important discoveries in the field of biometrics through studying statistical history and correlation, which he applied to animal evolution. His historical work included the method of moments, the Pearson system of curves, correlation and the chi-squared test.

In the 1960s and '70s, signature biometric authentication procedures were developed, but the biometric field remained fixed until the military and security agencies researched and developed biometric technology beyond fingerprinting.