How Does Biometric Passport Work to Provide Access Control?
Airport security has been one of the major issues of concern for most of the countries, especially considering the rising rate of militancy. Biometric technology has emerged as a powerful security support system to ensure access control at various public places. Biometric passport is one of the most significant breakthroughs in the field, used to ensure a number of security aspects:
- Automated and secure immigration checks
- Detection of manipulated documents and information
- Identification and verification of the passport holder
- Avoidance of militancy attacks at the air terminals
Worldwide Acceptance
The countries in the European Union and other parts of the world have taken important steps to adopt biometric passports in the recent years. UK is one of the first nations to make it compulsory for issuing biometric passports to new applicants and to those applying for a renewal. In the year 2009, the countries like Albania, Bosnia, Herzegovina, Croatia and many more have replaced the traditional passports with new biometric passports.
Working of Biometric Passports
Biometric passports are based upon contact less smart card technology, making use of biometric identification. Biometric systems used for identification in biometric passports include fingerprint recognition, iris recognition and facial recognition. With biometric technology, the samples of an individual are stored on a microprocessor chip and used for electronic authentication in the future. Digital images of biometric features, including finger patterns and retina are stored in the identity register. To make it more secure, a number of access control features are integrated with a biometric passport:
- Random chip identifiers that too provide random chip identification number every time.
- Basic Access Control and Extended Access Control to encrypt the communication data between the passport chip and the chip reader.
- Active authentication to avoid duplication of chip and passive authentication to avoid alteration of chip data.
Standardization for biometric passports is provided by various organizations, including the International Civil Aviation Organization, ISO and IEC. As a result, the use of biometric passports has evolved as a great security alternative to prevent big threats in the aviation industry.
Subscribe to this comment's feed
