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Protagonist of Digital Biometric Authentication and
Forensic Analysis.
Joseph O. Esin
Professor
Department of Computer Science, University of Calabar, Nigeria
Lead Professor of Computer Information Systems/Cybersecurity
Jarvis Christian College, Hawkins, Texas USA
Preamble
“Biometrics,” derived from the Greek “bio” meaning life and “metrics” denoting measure,
is entrenched with numerous applications involving the identification and verification of
individuals and groups of individuals’ identities. According to Heimdal Security,
“Biometrics is the measurement and statistical analysis of people's unique physical and
behavioral characteristics.” And “biometric authentication” is simply the process of
verifying individual identity using such measurements or other unique characteristics of
the body, then logging in as service, an app, a device and so on. The technology is mainly
used for identification and access control and for identifying individuals who are under
surveillance” (Dasclescu, 2020). Digital biometric authentication security emerged a few
decades ago due to weighty advances in computer information systems, cybersecurity
attacks, data breach, forensic studies, and analyses. The day-to-day increase in terrorist
cyber-threat and cyber-attacks across the globe besought the research in the protagonist of
biometric authentication forensic analysis as channel to expose challenges facing the
authorities of city, county, state and federal law enforcement officers, private and public
organizations, nations and global security operations.
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Biometric authentication and forensic analysis has been deployed without standard
procedure and security measures to battle imminent security challenges and threats. Digital
biometric authentication operations are rooted with superior level of security that cannot
be stolen, manipulated, or exposed to damage and sudden changes. Furthermore, it is less
time consuming, dependable, user friendly, hard to falsify and requires negligible training
time. It also has an inexpensive and accurate verification process. There is grave concern
in the education settings that is deeply rooted in using modern biometric technology for
skills, expertise, knowledge-based and experience for public support of biometric
authentication and data analysis.
This research calls on global communities’ collaborative agreement to establish biometric
authentication forensic and data analysis institutes in each state of the nation to educate first
responders of fingerprints, iris patterns, hand geometry, facial image, and deoxyribonucleic acid
(DNA) analysis. For the adoption and implementation of digital biometrics authentication forensic
analysis, this research operatives will serve as the best defensive and offensive security measures
designated to improve quality and longevity of lives and safeguard human society through the
discovery of definite and authentic fingerprints, voice, fingerprints, iris patterns, hand geometry,
facial image, and deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) resulting in the protection of innocent citizens
from erroneous conviction and jail terms.
Framework of Biometric Digital Biometric Authentication
Modern digital biometric authentication and forensic analysis is designed to provide
adequate security to any organization’s network security centers, workstations, network fileservers,
digital biometric database storage, reinforcement of the degree of certainty, individual privileges,
confidence, integrity, and accountability. As Fennelly (2017); Krutzn and Vines (2007); Kazimov
and Mahmudova (2015); and Nanavati, Thieme, and Nanavati (2002) noted, digital biometric
authentication provides better structures to obtain vital data, information, retina scan, fingerprint,
and iris recognition security than traditional authentication methods. This new method gives access
to authorized users and places unauthorized users on a disadvantage. Digital biometrics is
imbedded with personal identification numbers (PINs), assorted digit passwords and symbols
making it difficult to guess and manipulate data and information. Digital biometric authentication
supports a combination of a high level of network system rights and privileges to users, creating
an institution of username-password and allowing authorized administrators and users to create
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longer and more complex passwords that were not practicable prior to the introduction of digital
biometric technology (Esin, 2017; Ngwang, 2016; and Nanavati, Thieme, & Nanavati, 2002). Most
personnel in private and public organizations are urged to manage manifold passwords and PINs
and this multiplicity of passwords and usernames is likely to lead to the forgetfulness and
misplacement of vital information. The research aims to formulate a horizon to strengthen apparent
protagonists of digital biometric authentication and forensic analysis (PDBAFA).
Traditional digital biometric operations have been in operation, deployed and utilized for
some decades, but the main problem has been about how to secure these operations from intruders
and unauthorized users. Per Chauhan & Gupta (2015), Esin (2017) and Fennelly (2017), most
segments of digital biometric authentication are designed to guarantee access to facilities such as
colleges and university dormitories, hotel rooms, nuclear power plants, and organizations’
database centers, and automated fingerprint identification operation units. Effort to obtain
solutions and much needed advancement for digital biometric authentication is often miscalculated
(Hayes, 2015; Nanavati, Thieme, & Nanavati, 2002; and Ngwang, 2016).
Challenges facing public and private organizations amid open-ended operation of
biometric authentication and forensic analysis in the global workforce rest on the expansion of
biometric related skills, expertise, and knowledge-based experience to satisfy and assuage innocent
public ambition and confidence in the process. Per Fennelly (2017), Ngwang, (2016) and LeClair
& Keeley (2015), unhindered digital biometric education for first responders in strategic locations
such as airport security posts, government facilities and maintaining skilled and qualified
biometrics professionals will eradicate the trepidation, restore hope and confidence in the society.
The world community is witnessing innocent individuals wrongly convicted, thrown in jail,
sentenced to serve jail-terms for many years and later discovered that the fingerprints, iris patterns,
hand geometry, facial image and deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) were wrongly interpreted and
analyzed. It is this question of reliability that is at the center of this research and keeping the
security forces restless.
Traditional biometric machinists were not equipped to provide reliable result, eliminate
apprehension, and restore consumers’ confidence. It is particularly important that all counties,
states, nations and global organizations step forward and intensify effort to establish digital
biometric authentication and forensic analysis professional institutes in their state and nation to
reinstate buoyancy through unlimited biometric authentication education, installation and
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configuration of compatible hardware and software to get rid of wrong and faulty analyses that
often led to the conviction of innocent citizens. There is sovereignty in education that is deeply
rooted in using modern biometric technology for skills, expertise and knowledge-based experience
needed to strengthen the public support of biometric authentication and data analysis. This
research calls on global communities through collaborative agreement to establish digital
biometric authentication and forensic analysis institutions in their areas to educate first responders
of fingerprints, iris patterns, hand geometry, facial image, and deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA)
analyses and processes. Per Chauhan and Gupta (2015), Krutzn and Vines (2007), and Kazimov
and Mahmudova (2015), the United States has responded to this security challenge by the creation
of a well-structured unit of digital biometrics authentication and forensic analysis through program
educational objectives (PEO) in West Virginia University, Clarksburg. The PEO at the University
of West Virginia in Clarksburg is recognized as a sustainable, innovative benchmark institution
enrolling large populations of the United States Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) agents and
duplicating much needed expertise, skills and knowledge-based experience to restore hope and
self-confidence in the world community.
Digital biometric authentication operation required users’ logon name, password, and
application programming interface (API). Acquired fingerprint recognition images stored in the
organization’s databased permits immediate access and futuristic usage only by authorized
personnel who have access to and own the organization’s master usernames and passwords to
biometric secured centers. Equipment, including hardware and software, installed, and configured
in digital biometrics authentication will provide operative connections for incoming and outgoing
communication and instructions in the progression.
Modern digital biometrics authentication technology provides flexibility by allowing
efficient integration and management of secured data, information and verification of records
located in biometric database file servers. As Esin (2017), Fennelly (2017), Nanavati, Thieme, and
Nanavati (2002) noted, modern digital biometric database file servers, codenamed secured digital
command center, houses an organization’s protected master username, password, private data and
application data. Failure to adhere to or a swerve from modern-day digital biometrics
authentication and forensic analysis will allow regeneration of apprehension, loss of vital data,
alteration of information, unauthorized access, submission of untold sway on digital data integrity,
and the complete loss of confidence in operations across the globe. Modern digital Biometrics
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authentication forensic analysis has provided a systematic corridor for inventive advancement,
recuperation of global economy, security operation, telecommunication, high divination systems,
Internet connections and digital data stowage (Esin, 2017; Ngwang, 2016; and Kazimov &
Mahmudova, 2015). The adoption and implementation of leading-edge digital biometrics
authentication and forensic analysis operatives are the best defensive and offensive security
measures designated to improve quality and longevity of lives and to safeguard human society.
This security has been realized through the discovery and use of definite and authentic fingerprints.
voice. fingerprints, iris patterns, hand geometry, facial image, and deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA).
These worthwhile initiatives have all resulted in the protection of innocent citizens from erroneous
conviction and jail terms.
Limitations of Biometrics Digital Biometric Authentication
Digital biometric authentication and forensic analysis is entrenched with security contests and
challenges such as internal and external protection of digital database storage, lapses in integrity,
confidentiality, and reliability. As a result, this authentication devise requires comprehensive
measures to formulate solutions on the use of modern biometric technology to protect the
community. The traditional channels for biometric assessment are subject to cyber-threat, cyber-
attack, breach of data and records due to inadequate equipment and lapses in security operative
measures. Private and public organizations are apprehensive of its efficacy and they are constantly
in search of effective measures to protect data, assets, resources, vital records, internal personnel
ability to misuse security privileges in lieu of financial benefits and special relationships. Kazimov
and Mahmudova (2015) in their studies on biometrics authentication and forensic analysis noted
that the conspicuous thought-provoking routes and loopholes used by authorized officials within
the organization to produce defective security tools including duplication of organizations’ badges,
door locks and keys, which were vulnerable to the maneuvering of essential outlets to overtake
organizations’ security operation.
The apparent deceptive dodges can only be eliminated upon implementation of a well-
structured groundwork to monitor and prevent internal and external personnel’s ability to misuse
assigned privileges and the corresponding effect of such misconduct on organizations (Chauhan
& Gupta, 2015). Per Kazimov and Mahmudova (2015), traditional biometric assessment and
evaluation are questionable and not a hundred percent (100%) perfect and reliable. It was further
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alleged that miscalculations in biometric authentication analysis is represented by two categories:
false rejection rate (FRR) and false acceptance rate (FAR). FRR represents the rejection of an
authorized person attempting to access the biometric authentication system; while false acceptance
rate (FAR) is causally related to traditional acceptance of a person trying to be who he or she
claims to represent. These two archetypal categories of vulnerability often let down the
confidential threshold in biometric operation, leaving the general population in a state of
uncertainty. A plan of action to redress the current lapses must involve restructuring and stabilizing
biometric security operations by enabling proportional decrease on FAR and functional increase
on FRR imprecisions (Chauhan and Gupta, 2015 and Kazimov & Mahmudova, 2015). Well-
adjusted increases in false rejection rate will provide corresponding upsurge and restore trust and
confidence in biometric authentication operations. Furthermore, false rejection rate (FRR)
represents one of the weightiest specifications in the protagonist of biometric authentication in
forensic analysis. False rejection rate (FRR) is identified as type I error in biometric authentication
on public and private organizations and such errors often occur by mistake and are often
sporadically generated in biometric authentication security systems (Esin, 2017; Fennelly, 2017;
and Kazimov & Mahmudova, 2015). False rejection originates when the system fails to recognize
an authorized operator and rejects the person as an intruder or an impersonator. FAR is a type II
error and typically represents most solemn biometric authentication security mistakes and errors.
This error often allows unauthorized users to access the security center with expressed attempt to
block unauthorized personnel. Furthermore, and as a natural error in biometrics authentication
analysis, it mistakenly allows an unauthorized person to be authenticated (McMillan & Abernathy,
2014; and Alexander & Shahnewaz, 2020).
Advantages of Digital Biometric Authentication
Traditional or original ways of biometric identification failed to withstand modern challenges of
efficiency, security, and accuracy. Private and public organizations and higher education
enterprises often issued students, staff and faculty identification cards, private and public
organizations circulation items such as driving license, passports, badges used for entrance and
exit in and out of organizations’ premises. The emerging of digital communications,
telecommunications, digital biometrics, and information technology gave room to and enhanced
accuracy, integrity, confidentiality, reliability of digital data and information (McMillan &
Abernathy, 2014 and Alexander & Shahnewaz, 2020). The growing strength of digital biometric
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authentication operative measures is closing the gaps of traditional identification methods and
replacing the former, the old methods with touch screen and fingerprint sensor processors. Digital
biometric authentication has eliminated the need of carrying an external relic to prove human
identity; it has also encouraged hardware and software developers to unveil modern and innovative
approaches for identity authentication on mobile devices and the production of integrated digital
biometrics technology to ease global apprehension on biometric systems.
In many instances, military personnel and law enforcement offices are challenged with identity
verification problems because of limited access to centralized resources in their offices. The
evolving of modern digital biometric authentication devices is creating a broad range of
opportunities, making it possible to effectively and accurately match identifiers like face,
fingerprints, and iris scan on-the-go, thereby eliminating waste of productive time, and mending
loopholes that were not in existence prior to the development of digital biometric technology.
Emerging and innovative digital biometric authentication operative is providing reliable
accountability and auditable logs of personnel, guests, and administrators’ access in and out of the
organizational facilities; thereby, assuring that users cannot be denied digital logs. This resulting
success is an adequate proof of intentional access to organization resources and facilities.
Per Alexander and Shahnewaz (2020), Hayes (2015), and Nanavati, Thieme, and Nanavati
(2002), modern digital biometric authentication and forensic analysis is experiencing growing
acceptance across the globe due to emerging accuracy of identifying users, authentication of data
security, growing strength to close gaps of conventional method and replacing them with the
modern approaches. Current digital biometric authentication and forensic analysis researchers
such as Esin (2017); Fennelly (2017); Kazimov and Mahmudova (2015); and Nanavati, Thieme,
and Nanavati (2002) provide mitigating and progressive assessment and benefits of modern digital
biometric authentication and forensic analysis on innocent global citizens. The results are that:
• Digital biometric authentication and forensic analysis approach is a viable instrument for
identification (ID) verification for private and public organizations, higher education,
financial institutions, and military security operations.
• Digital biometric authentication and forensic analysis approach is entrenched with superior
level of security and cannot be stolen, and easily manipulated.
• Digital biometric authentication and forensic analysis is less exposed to damage and
sudden changes, and less time consuming.
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• Digital biometrics authentication and forensic analysis is dependable, user friendly, hard
to falsify, and requires negligible training time.
• Digital biometric authentication and forensic analysis is inexpensive and has distinctive
recognition features and accurate verification processes.
• Digital biometric authentication and forensic analysis approach is effectively employed in
forensics investigation, criminal identification, and prison security
• Digital biometric authentication and forensic analysis is also used to avert illicit access to
automated teller machine (ATMs), cellular phones, smart cards, workstations, and
computer network systems.
As earlier state, modern digital biometric authentication and forensic analysis is designed to
provide adequate security to organizations’ network security centers, workstations, network
fileservers; it is equally used as a digital database storage and reinforcement of the degree of
certainty, individual privileges, confidence, integrity and accountability. Modern digital biometric
authentication and forensic analysis is also a worthwhile point of reference in digital biometric
authentication and forensic analysis operation is often deployed in across-the-board surroundings
encountering multiple of incoming and outgoing conducts and characteristics of a large population,
at local and international airports, judicial offices, national and central banks, and military garrisons
to safeguard vulnerable innocent citizens.
Effect of Digital Biometric Amid COVID-19
Today, digital biometric authentication and forensic analysis is exerting greater impact on
members of the world community who must undergo a thorough screening process by custom and
immigration officers at the point of entry, exit and borders crossings. Amid the COVID-19, the
major concern is the security of vulnerable private citizens. Notwithstanding the world citizens’
privacy, digital biometric authentication and forensic analysis and testing is recurrently deployed
as the most authentic defensive and offensive approach to effective and efficient security
measurement tool against the world pandemic shattering episode. However, the pandemic seems
to be girded by scriptural and mystical realities when analyzed mathematically:
Today, COVID-19 (C = 100, 0 =79, V = 5, 1 = 1, D = 500 = 685-19 – 666;
(Revelation 13:18) has put the entire global community in challenging times and
uncertain disorders amidst intriguing questions that allow super-powers, middle-
powers, lowers-powers and zero-powers; first-world, second-world, third-world,
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fourth-world and zero-world nations to undyingly and undeniably remain humble,
unassuming, and untiringly acknowledge the Glory of God’s Creation. God
repronounced His Glory, Wonders and Blessings in the Worldly Kingdom that He
had created (Job 38:18). God did not declare His servant Job innocent or guilty;
hence, amid COVID-19, we must continue to work together, pray together and
eternally refrain from declaring all God’s dedicated and consecrated families on
earth innocent or guilty (Esin, 2011; Murray & Murray, 1985).
Nations who are firmly engrained with stockpiles of nuclear weapons, ballistic long-range,
short-range and no-range missiles that act like labor-saving-mechanical appliances, such as
washing machines, toasters and photocopy machines containing push buttons, which gives these
leaders the unique and unprecedented opportunity and urge to push just a button and have the
devastation done on vulnerable innocent global citizens. Leaders with nuclear weapons seem
determined to do everything humanly possible to destroy entire nations or regions who attempt to
acquire nuclear weapons; where are the nuclear missile buttons now that COVID-19 is drumming
the doorbell.? COVID-19 operates on an exclusive agenda that cannot be changed, re-scheduled
and in aberration of the new world order, demanding total obedience and submission to God’s last
pronouncement across the globe. In compliance to the new world order, global communities,
including villages, cities, counties, local regions, states and national organizations are urged to
assume equal responsibilities in the re-organization and re-structuring of functional rehabilitation
by approving matching budget to establishing well-suited pandemic hospitals, healthcare facilities
with well-matched medical equipment and supplies, and educational systems with well-suited
instructional equipment and learning tools that is parallel to national military-weapon budgets. Per
Chauhan and Gupta (2015) and Kazimov and Mahmudova (2015), most segments of biometric
authentication are used to identify, voice verification, and record a person’s voice through a
microphone. This process is further categorized into more dimensions such as measurement, signal
processing, pattern matching, forensic inquiry, analysis, decision making, creation of the reference
model and authentication trial (Esin, 2017; Fennelly, 2017; and Hayes, 2015).
Recap
Today, the modern digital biometric authentication and forensic analysis is improving
quality and longevity of lives and safeguarding human society. It is meeting acceptance across the
globe due to emerging accuracy, matching strength to close gaps of predictable approach and
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replacing the old identification systems with superior level of security that cannot be stolen and/or
manipulated. It is also dependable, user friendly, hard to falsify and it requires negligible training
time, inexpensive and accurate verification process.
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