Securing Biometrics Using Watermarking

Abstract

This chapter focuses on the role of watermarking techniques in biometric systems. Biometric systems are automated systems of verifying or recognizing the identity of a living person based on a physiological or behavioral characteristic. While biometric-based techniques have inherent advantages over other authentication techniques, ensuring the security and integrity of data is a major concern. Data hiding techniques are thus used in biometric systems for securing biometric data itself. Amongst all the biometric techniques, fingerprint-based identification is the oldest and the most well established method used in numerous applications because fingerprints are unique and they remain unchanged during the human life span. However, fingerprint images should be watermarked without affecting their quality and their minutia matching ability. Moreover, if the watermark embedded in the fingerprint image is the face image of the same individual, the watermarking scheme will have two levels of security such that it will not only protect the cover fingerprint but also provides a more secure system of personal recognition and authentication at the receiver's end. This work finds application in a number of security implementations based on multimodal biometric authentication. Computationally intelligent techniques can be employed to develop efficient watermarking algorithms in terms of watermarked image quality and distortion tolerance ability.