Biometric authentication is convenient, but privacy advocates fear that biometric security undermines personal privacy. The problem is that personal data can be collected easily and without consent.

Face recognition is part of everyday life in Chinese cities, where it is used for everyday shopping, and London is perfectly littered with surveillance cameras. Now, New York, Chicago, and Moscow are linking security cameras in their cities with face recognition databases to help local police fight crime. Improving the technology, Carnegie Mellon University is developing a camera that can scan the iris of people in a crowd from a distance of 10 meters.

In 2018, face recognition will be introduced at Dubai Airport, where travelers will be photographed with 80 cameras passing through the tunnel in a virtual aquarium.

A more pressing issue is that personal information databases are targets for hackers. For example, when the Human Resources Office in the United States was hacked in 2015, cybercriminals hid the fingerprints of 5.6 million civil servants, which made them vulnerable to identity theft.

Storing biometric data on a device – for example, TouchID or Face ID iPhone – is considered more secure than storing it with a service provider, even if the data is encrypted.

This risk is similar to the risk in the password database, in which hackers can crack the system and steal data that is not effectively protected. The consequences, however, are significantly different. If the password is cracked, it can be changed. The biometric data in the contract remains unchanged forever.

The risks are real, but biometric technology still offers very compelling security solutions because the systems are convenient and difficult to duplicate.
It is an asset for storing and processing information, a powerful combination of biometrics and passwords with hardware encryption provides reliable data protection.