BIOMETRIC SECURITY

Biometric Security in NHS and airports and in general

Biometric Security in NHS and airports and in general

Introduction

The word biometric can be defined as "life - measure." It is used in security and access control applications to mean measurable physical characteristics of a person that can be checked on an automated basis.

Although you may not think about it, your driver's license contains biometric information about you. Your height, weight, hair color and eye color are all physical characteristics that can easily be checked(Ashbourn, 2007). However, your height changes with age (16 year old drivers get taller, senior citizens get shorter). Your hair color changes naturally (and on purpose). You can wear colored contact lenses that change your eye color; everyone's weight fluctuates over time.

Biometric data that does not change

Security personnel look for biometric data that does not change over the course of your life; that is, they look for physical characteristics that stay constant and that are difficult to fake or change on purpose.

Most of us can remember when biometric security checks were the stuff of science fiction or action movies like James Bond. However, biometric identification is becoming commonplace as hardware and software come down in price.

Purpose

The purpose of this study is to analyze the Biometric Security in NHS and airports.

Methodology

Research Design

The research is based on secondary data collection. The data is extracted from various journals, articles and books. Secondary research describes information gathered through literature, publications, broadcast media, and other non-human sources. This type of research does not involve human subjects.

The research approach used is qualitative. Qualitative research is much more subjective than quantitative research and uses very different methods of collecting information which could be both primary and secondary. As already mentioned this study chooses the secondary method. The nature of this type of research is exploratory and open-ended.

This type of research is often less costly than surveys and is extremely effective in acquiring information. It is often the method of choice in instances where quantitative measurement is not required.

Literature Search

The criteria of selection for the literature was relevance to the research topic and the year of publication. Both public and private libraries as well as online libraries were visited to access the data. Some of the online databases that were accessed are ebsco, questia, emerald, phoenix and so on.

Keywords

Some of the keywords that were used to conduct the search are: Biometric Security, NHS and airports etc.

Findings

The biometric technology works by photographing a passenger's iris pattern and storing the data in a database, together with passport details.

Public Sector: Get the latest public sector news straight to your inbox. Sign up for the PS newsletter today! Iris was launched at London's Heathrow airport in March 2006. The system is currently operational at Heathrow Terminals 1 to 4, Manchester Terminals 1 and 2, Birmingham Terminal 1 and Gatwick North, with Gatwick South due to get it during 2007(Nanavati, et al, 2007). A one-off enrolment process for the Iris system takes about five minutes and is ...