But biometrics has extended its reach. It's not just for government agencies and arch-villains anymore. Reduced manufacturing costs and heightened security concerns have brought a wide array of private-sector companies onto the biometrics playing field, ranging from tiny startups to major industry players like Compaq, Sony and Toshiba. According to the hype, the technology improves ease of use and reduces user support costs while securing networks against all but the most formidable attackers. Those claims are not entirely without merit.
Users hate passwords because they are time-consuming to use and difficult to remember.
Security professionals hate passwords because they are easily guessed or stolen. Moreover, the harder it is to steal or guess a password, the harder it is to remember, as well. Biometric technologies attempt to escape that dilemma by relying on unique physical characteristics, rather than a shared secret, to authenticate users . The measurements are reduced to a template containing data unique to a given individual, but which typically cannot be used to recreate an image or facsimile of the characteristic. The authenticating factor is a part of the user's body, so he has nothing to forget or lose.