[biometrics]

Biometrics is the science and technology of authentication (i.e. establishing the identity of an individual) by measuring the person's physiological or behavioral features. The term is derived from the Greek words "bios" for life and "metron" for measure.

In information technology (IT), biometrics usually refers to technologies for measuring and analyzing human physiological characteristics such as fingerprints, eye retinas and irises, voice patterns, facial patterns, and hand measurements, especially for authentication purposes.

Examples of behavioural characteristics which can be measured include signature recognition, gait recognition, speaker recognition, and the most successful, human authentication via typing pattern (rhythm) recognition.

In a typical IT biometric system, a person registers with the system when one or more of his physiological characteristics are obtained, processed by a numerical algorithm, and entered into a database. Ideally, when he logs in, all of his features match 100%; then when someone else tries to log in, she does not fully match, so the system will not allow her to log in. Current technologies have widely varying Equal Error Rates - as low as 60% and as high as 99.9%