Biometrics assisted secure network transactions

Biometric methods of authentication such as fingerprints, hand geometry, face recognition, voice, retina and iris scan are being increasingly used for security purposes. However online transactions still use traditional knowledge based, i.e., Personal Identification Number (PIN) or password for authentication. Such methods have proved ineffective over the course of time. Traditional key based authentication has been in use over the years, but not many forays have been made in to securing network transactions using biometrics. The length of the authentication key used in authentication systems is an important piece of the authentication process. In non-biometric authentication processes such as passwords or PIN numbers, depending on the length of the key, the information may be vulnerable to access by unauthorized users. Our system makes conventional key based authentication obsolete by replacing or supplementing the normal key characters with a personal identifier of the user. Without this biometric key the service is inaccessible. In this study we propose novel authentication protocol, based on use of a contactless undistorted fingerprint images to generate authentication key. The authentication process will be reinforced by randomly selected areas of a fingerprint that are used to generate keys. An additional layer of security is provided by using blood vessel map to determine a live finger is being used. We assert that usage of contactless, thus non-distorted, fingerprint as input to generate single session keys will enhance security of network transactions because of the amount of information in randomly selected segments of a fingerprint which is available to generate unique keys.