A template protection scheme for multimodal biometric system with fingerprint, palmprint, iris and retinal traits

Biometrics have long been used for various applications in the areas like access control to facilities and computers, criminal identification, border security, access to nuclear power plant, identity authentication in network environment, airport security, and issue of passports or driver licenses, forensic and medical databases. As biometric finds its applications in several high security areas providing security to biometric template is of utmost importance. A biometric is permanently associated with a user and cannot be changed. Hence, if a biometric identifier is compromised, it is lost forever and possibly for every application where the biometric is used. Moreover, if the same biometric is used in multiple applications, a user can potentially be tracked from one application to the next by cross-matching biometric databases. Biometrics also leaks personal information to the attacker. Nevertheless, biometric systems are prone to a variety of attacks. The stored biometric template attack is the most severe of all the attacks. Biometric templates cannot be reissued on spoofing. Therefore, apart from security; biometric templates should be imparted with revocability. No single template protection method reported in recent years is capable of satisfying the diversity, revocability, security and performance requirements.