New developments in science have enabled the growing security market to develop increasingly user friendly products, which make the most of this new innovative technology. We’ve all struggled in the past with a security safe – whether it’s finding the right key on the keyring in the dark, worrying about losing it when on the move, or remembering the six digit combination in a stressful situation and not leaving it written down anywhere obvious where it might fall into the wrong hands.
What are biometrics?
Now we have biometrics. A biometric or biometric identifier can be defined as an objective measurement of a physical characteristic of an individual. This can be compared with others which are stored in a database, and then used to verify the identity of that individual. Sometimes biometrics are iris scans of the eye, or voice or facial recognition software, but the most commonly known is the high tech art of fingerprint recognition.
How does a biometric scanner work?
A fingerprint scanner will take an image of your finger, and study closely the pattern of ridges and valleys that make up the image. It can then determine if this pattern matches the pattern of ridges and valleys in the images which are stored within it’s memory.
Only specific characteristics, different with every fingerprint, are saved as an encrypted biometric key, or by a mathematical representation. No actual physical image of your fingerprint is actually saved, only a representation in binary code. The code can never be converted back into an image of your fingerprints.
What makes a biometric safe especially secure?
With every individual having unique fingerprints, and never losing them, there can’t be a much easier safe to operate than a biometric fingerprint safe. All you need to do is put your hand on top of the biometric scanner located on your safe, wait for it to recognise your unique fingerprint, and watch as your safe immediately opens for you.
Who might use a biometric safe
Biometric safes are designed for owners who may want to give access to more than one user, for example to certain members of staff within a company who need to access important documents should a manager be absent. To set this up all that is required is for the people who are to be registered users of the safe to have their fingerprint details stored in the safe database so that they can be instantly recognised. This is an ideal way to prevent your secure information or valuables from falling into the wrong hands.
There should be no concerns about the cleanliness of the finger zone on your biometric safe. You can reassure your employees that it will be touched much less frequently than toilet door handles or office chairs.
Most biometric safes
come with an additional extra key option so that they can be opened the traditional way in the event that they need to be opened and no fingerprint holders are available.
