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Biometric Fingerprint Locks and Safes - 08/13/2007 - By Edan Etzyoni
Abstract:
Biometric safes and locks have become more popular nowadays for people who use advanced technology. Bio = life and metron = measure in the ancient Greek language.
Among the physical characteristics of the biometric field, we can find iris recognition, face recognition and fingerprint recognition. The best value of the biometric safes and locks is that we don’t need a key anymore.
History:
Although there is no evidence that fingerprints were used to identify persons in the pre-modern era, it is believed that governmental papers were stamped with finger print impressions in Persia as early as the 14th century.
In 1892 Sir Francis Galton offered a detailed analysis of identifying persons by their finger prints in his book “Finger Prints”. He estimated the probability of two persons to have the fingerprint to be extremely low to impossible.
The world’s first bureau was opened in India in 1897, trying to help identifying and classifying criminals, and in 1901 a bureau was founded in the Scotland Yard, the United Kingdom’s Police service.
Anatomy and Patterns:
People have ridge skin on their fingers. Like everything in the human body, the ridges form through a combination of a genetic code (DNA) results in random events, influenced by both, the environment and the genetics of the fetus. These random events make the fingerprints a unique marker, to be used as an identification tool, either in security products (locks and safes, for example) or in identifying people.
Scanners:
There are two basic scanners for fingerprints, optical and capacitance. Optical scanner is a charge coupled device (CCD), an array of light-sensitive diodes, which generate an electrical signal in response to light photons. Each diode records a tiny dot representing the light that hit that spot. The light and dark spots recorded form an image of the scanned palm. Then, a processor checks whether the image is clear and adequate for comparison purposes.
The comparison process is performed in three stages: checking the darkness level and then checking the horizontal and vertical lines of the image. Then it proceeds to comparing the captured image with the fingerprint on file.
The capacitance scanner generates an image of the finger using its capacity characteristics. The sensor contains an array of cells, each composed of two conductor plates, covered with an insulator, forming a basic capacitor (an electronic component which can either store up or charge electrical current). Finger ridge will have a different output than a finger “valley” when they are scanned by the capacitance sensor. The sensor array forms the image of the finger that is scanned.
Most biometric fingerprint safes and locks use the optical sensor rather than the capacitance sensor.
Usage in Security products:
Lately, there is an extensive use of fingerprint scanners for security purposes, as in fingerprint locks, fingerprint safes, iris recognition locks and more. There are a few cons for using fingerprint locks and safes: (a) People can guess your password or combination, but they cannot guess your fingerprint pattern. (b) You cannot forget your fingerprint like you can forget or loose your PIN, password or card. (c) Fingerprints are harder to fake than identification cards and tags for a card reader.
Products:
Most of the biometric fingerprint safes have the scanning time (time to capture the image) of less than one second, like the ADEL LA9-3, Bioaxxis BDS1, Shepherd DL-210 and DL-240. Whilst the scanning time is pretty standard, the capacity of the locks and the safes varies from 10 users on Honeywell’s 2054SB, 2084SB safes through 30 users on the Elite FP-1216 and Bioaxxis BDS1 to 120 users on the Adel LA9-3.
The false accept rate (FAR), that is the probability to get a match for a non-matching pattern, is less than 0.0001% for the BDS1 lock and the Adel locks, and less than 0.0004% for the DL-210 lock.
Fingerprint recognition time varies from 0.2 seconds per user for the shepherd DL-210 to less than a second for the Sequiam Biovault 2.0 safe.
Epilog:
The differences between the fingerprint locks and safes are usually the scanning time, the false accept rate, the image recognition times and the capacity of users. Still, there are other parameters to consider when deciding on our biometric safe or lock, like false reject rate (FRR), position tolerance and rotation tolerance (will be explained in the next paper).
Resources:
www.wikipedia.com
www.computer.howstuffworks.com
www.nolo.com
www.biometrics.cse.msu.edu - By Salil Prabhakar, Anil Jain.
www.onin.com
Product Review - Elite Safes BEC-917: 09/05/2007
Elite BEC-917
Category – Hotel Safes.
Imagine yourself checking-in to a hotel room and want to get your personal items, money and jewelry secured, you immediately reach the safe, which is usually bolted to the wall or to a closet. Then, it might take you a couple of minutes to figure how to use the safe. Well, this safe is what it is all about!
Its look is fashionable and may fit most of the fancy hotel rooms. But the most important thing, to my opinion, besides protecting the valuables, is to have a users’ friendly interface. This means that the safe is easy to operate. I’m tired of trying to figure all the advanced technologies that are hard to figure out how to use them.
The BEC-917 hotel safe comes with batteries uninstalled, so we had to use a screw driver to remove the tag on the front door and insert the over-ride key in order to open the safe for installation. I removed the cover at the back of the door in order to install the batteries. That wasn’t so friendly, but it will happen only when the batteries run off – about once in 18 months – manufacturer’s suggestion.
Once the batteries are installed, the safe is ready for smooth operation. Setting up a different code than the pre-set is easy. And so is registering the credit card as your opening and locking code. I have tried all major four: American Express, Visa, Master Card and Discover, and they all worked fine.
The last part is to bolt the safe to the wall. It comes with two anchor holes and mounting hardware, which makes it a lot easier to bolt.
Ratings:
Overall – 4 1/2 Stars
Users’ friendly – 4 ½ stars
Look – 5 Stars
Installation – 4 Stars (mainly for the battery cover).
Security – 3 Stars (the construction is not thick).
