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Verification vs.
Identification
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Positive identification answers the
“Who am I?,” although the response is not necessarily a name – it
could be an employee ID or another unique identifier. A typical
positive identification system would be a prison release program
where users do not enter an ID number or use a card, but simply look
at a iris capture device and are identified from an inmate database.
Negative identification systems search databases in the same
fashion, comparing one template against many, but are designed to
ensure that a person is not present in a database. This prevents
people from enrolling twice in a system, and is often used in
large-scale public benefits programs in which users enroll multiple
times to gain benefits under different names.
Not all identification systems are
based on determining a username or ID. Some systems are designed
determine if a user is a member of a particular category. For
instance, an airport may have a database of known terrorists with no
knowledge of their actual identities. In this case the system would
return a match, but no knowledge of the person’s identity is
involved.
Verification (1:1, matching,
authentication) – The process of establishing the validity of a
claimed identity by comparing a verification template to an
enrollment template. Verification requires that an identity be
claimed, after which the individual’s enrollment template is located
and compared with the verification template. Verification answers
the question, “Am I who I claim to be?” Some verification systems
perform very limited searches against multiple enrollee records. For
example, a user with three enrolled fingerprint templates may be
able to place any of the three fingers to verify, and the system
performs 1:1 matches against the user’s enrolled templates until a
match is found. One-to-few. There is a middle ground between
identification and verification referred to as one-to-few (1:few).
This type of application involves identification of a user from a
very small database of enrollees. While there is no exact number
that differentiates a 1:N from a 1:few system, any system involving
a search of more than 500 records is likely to be classified as 1:N.
A typical use of a 1:few system would be access control to sensitive
rooms at a 50-employee company, where users place their finger on a
device and are located from a small database.
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