The term 'biometrics' is now widely known as "the science of measuring physical characteristics, to verify a person's identity which includes voice recognition, iris and face scans, and fingerprint recognition."

Biometrics identifies a person via a unique human characteristic: the size and shape of a hand, a fingerprint, one's face or several aspects of the eye. If the goal of an access control system is to control where people, not credentials, can and cannot go, then only a biometric device truly provide this capability to the end user.

As a result, biometrics is used on the front doors of thousands of business around the world, at the doors to the tarmacs of major airports, and the entrances of other facilities where the combination of security and convenience are desired.

Biometric device has become popular and commercially being used around the world. More than 900 biometric hand readers control client and employee access to special areas of Italian banks and more than 100 units perform similar functions in Russia. In the United Kingdom, Her Majesty's Prisons rely on biometrics for prisoner and visitor tracking.

Let us come to applications of biometric devices in electronic appliances and database. Password is not basically a useful way to log into computer and Internet. Password does not identify a person rather than identifying couple of characters. So an imposter can access the important business data by knowing the password anyway. Moreover, common people use to forget password frequently for their appliances. To overcome these hassles, these days, biometric device is being used. The device is attached to an appliance by PS/2 or serial port and it has got a sensor. The devices are easy to set up and provide speedy performance. When the user put his/her fingers on it, the device can authenticate the person.

The sensor is easy to integrate into Internet appliances such as laptops, personal digital assistants (PDAs), and mobile phones. This means you, your customers, and your employees can now forget your passwords-all of them-and replace them with fast, reliable, user-friendly, fingerprint authentication.

Sometimes the device seems a mouse as the sensor is attached to the mouse. This integrated mouse is known as Biometric mouse password manager.

Besides biometric fingerprint devices, iris recognition device is becoming popular. The device captures the unique pattern of human iris to authenticate identity. The device is basically a recognition camera with size and shape of a Webcam. One must enroll his/her iris pattern first, by simply aligning their eyes with the camera by focusing on a small green light. Once the iris pattern is enrolled, the camera can recognize precisely the person's identity. Iris recognition is the most accurate, non-invasive and easy to use biometric for secure identification.

Like fingerprint and iris recognition, biometrics is being used for voice recognition to deliver secure access to transactions and information. By verifying users based on the unique characteristics of their voice, Verifier enables businesses to add security to applications in a wide range of areas including healthcare, commerce, telecommunications and banking.

Like other countries of the world, various sensitive agencies of Bangladesh can introduce biometric access control using the above-mentioned devices. The cost is less, for one device, it ranges from $50 to $250 approximately.

The goal of any access control system is to let authorised people, not just their credentials, into specific places. Only with the use of a biometric device can this goal be achieved. A card-based access system will control the access of authorised pieces of plastic, but not who is in possession of the card. Systems using PINs require an individual only know a specific number to gain entry; but who actually entered the code cannot be determined. On the contrary, biometric devices verify who people are by what they are, whether by hand, eye, fingerprint, or voice recognition. Biometric reductions in errors have lowered the capital costs of ID cards in recent years and the true benefit of eliminating them is realised through reduced administrative efforts.

The author is a lecturer of MIS at the School of BBA, Southeast University, Bangladesh.