Biometric Door Locks

[Maejo Man]

A lady friend invited me to her new condo last night, but asked me to call her when I go to the car park so she could let me in. I said just give me the room number and I will come up. She laughed and said again...Call me.

It wasn't till I got to the main entrance that I understood why. The block had installed a biometric lock on the entrance!! A great idea so you don't have to carry keys. I am sure there are drawbacks to this, but can't think of any offhand. Are there many new blocks installing these?

[freddy123]

Depends on how accurate it is, I think they are probably getting pretty good nowdays but they used to have problems when people had been sweating heavily or had been swimming recently. That can be solved by having a pin number aswell as a backup.

The place to put your finger could get pretty dirty and slimy if it isn't maintained very well.

I prefer the RFID cards, they fit nicely in your wallet, and if the reader is installed at pocket height its not much different to the fingerprint reader. My apartments have it so that you have to swipe your card on the way out aswell, which is good cause it means I can't leave the building without my wallet. (It also has an emergency button incase your trapped)

Also the whole not having to carry keys is a bit stupid atm, until your motorbike/car/office/postbox/garage has biometrics installed your still going to be carrying a set of keys anyway.

[QED]

We just had these installed at our new office, they are on every door so access to sensitive areas is also controlled.

Saves me having to carry a big bunch of office keys so I like it, I did however enquire what would happen in the event of a power cut and was greeted with alot of blank stares

Edit// forgot to mention that apparently they don't work if you have a cut on your finger, so they scanned 2 fingers and we can use either.

Edited October 30, 2009 by QED

[gotlost]

Say this sound great no more keys or swipe cards. They could install these on our watering holes to keep out the undisirables. The down side after you found a watering hole that would let you in you return home to find out your wife installed a unit while you were gone.

[Maejo Man]

Depends on how accurate it is, I think they are probably getting pretty good nowdays but they used to have problems when people had been sweating heavily or had been swimming recently. That can be solved by having a pin number aswell as a backup.

The place to put your finger could get pretty dirty and slimy if it isn't maintained very well.

I prefer the RFID cards, they fit nicely in your wallet, and if the reader is installed at pocket height its not much different to the fingerprint reader. My apartments have it so that you have to swipe your card on the way out aswell, which is good cause it means I can't leave the building without my wallet. (It also has an emergency button incase your trapped)

My condo in Bangkok had swipe cards and yes you had to use it to get the lift to go out, so no problem forgetting it.

The unit in the block I mentioned originally had a back up key pad to enter a PIN if all else failed

[StevieH]

when did carrying keys become such a chore?

[quiksilva]

We have them installed at our office, and nine times out of ten it doesn't read my thumb correctly... one of the biggest annoyances of my day!!

[Maejo Man]

when did carrying keys become such a chore?

When the bunch weighs over half a Kg I have over twenty, and most get used every day

Ok for you blokes with one room key and maybe one for a motorcycle......

Edited October 30, 2009 by Maejo Man

[Daffy D]

Mythbusters did a program on these locks some time ago and found that even some top of the range models could be opened by using photocopy of the finger.

[thaimite]

I did however enquire what would happen in the event of a power cut and was greeted with alot of blank stares

Biometric readers are used a lot in government installations. Quality varies depending on price and the cheaper ones are easy to fool There is even a You Tube video on how to do it. Much simpler than picking a lock,so do not think the biometric reader on your PC will keep a hacker out for more than 5 minutes

As for power failure is depends on what the installer wants. They can fail open, closed or be battery backed. The only big power draw is for the lock which is a short pulse so batteries can last a long time.

[Mestizo]

RE: Drawbacks:

-False accept/reject rates tend to be much higher with these forms of biometrics (fingerprints, hand geometry) than others (i.e. retina scans).

-High false rejection rates are a huge annoyance/ inconvenience to end-users.

-High false acceptance rates can lead to unacceptable levels of risk.

-There is the cost to administer and maintain the systems. Someone will need to enroll new users, which usually involves scanning and rescanning body parts multiple times. This same process is usually repeated for multiple fingers (or both eyes). Somebody also needs to diligently remove users when access is no longer required. Usually the captured images are stored in a database on the controlling server along with all the relevant user data and granted privileges.. This DB and application need to be maintained and properly backed up.

-Since this server is basically performing an AAA function (authentication, authorization, and accounting), the access logs should be regularly reviewed/ audited and stored off server for some period of time. This equates to more administration overhead.

-The user education aspect enters the picture as well. Users need to be taught to how to use this device, what to do in case of failure, etc. More administration overhead (as well as resetting of forgotten codes, etc).

RE: swipe *OR* pin code.

-This is a pretty poor design. Should not be one or the other. Ideally it should be at least dual-factor authentication. This should be some combination of "something you are" (fingerprint, retina, etc), "something you have" (RFID card, etc), and "something you know" (PIN code, password, etc).

RE: Loss of power

-As another poster already mentioned this is configurable to either fail closed or fail open. The ideal is a fail closed scenario with a manual override. I the event of an outage, the system could manually be overridden and replaced by a human checking ID's, or something similar.

-Mestizo