Biometric Access Control Systems: a review on technologies to improve their efficiency

One of the hot topics of today's world is security. Not only companies spend more and more money in order to protect their valuable assets (physical and digital), regular people also need enhanced forms of security regarding personal sensitive information. Traditional password methods for protection of information are prone to brute force attacks, as computational power increases. The focus has then been shifting towards more advanced forms of authentication that do not rely exclusively on a sequence of symbols. The use of biometric authentication has been added as a security feature to numerous systems. Its use has increased in popularity during the last few years, benefiting from a mass implementation of biometric authentication methods in mobile devices (namely laptops and smartphones), such as fingerprint readers and/or built-in cameras. There are already a few available systems which can offer these advantages, but they are typically closed systems that do not integrate well with existing infrastructures. Therefore, this paper intends to review the use of biometric sensors on a fully open and compatible Access Control System.