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Encryption, Biometric

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  • First Online:
Encyclopedia of Biometrics

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Synonyms

Biometric cryptosystem; Biometric key generation; Biometric locking; Fuzzy extractor; Secure sketch

Definition

Biometric Encryption (BE) is a group of emerging technologies that securely bind a digital key to a biometric or generate a digital key from the biometric, so that no biometric image or template is stored. What is stored is the BE template otherwise known as a “biometrically encrypted key” or “helper data.” As a result, neither the digital key nor the biometric can be retrieved from the stored BE template. BE conceptually differs from other systems that encrypt biometric images or templates using conventional encryption or store a cryptographic key and release it upon successful biometric authentication. With BE, the digital key is recreated only if the correct biometric sample is presented on verification. The output of BE verification is either a digital key or a failure message. This “encryption/decryption” process is fuzzy because of the natural variability of...

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Office of the Information and Privacy Commissioner, Toronto, ON, Canada

    Ann Cavoukian & Alex Stoianov

Authors
  1. Ann Cavoukian
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  2. Alex Stoianov
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Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Center for Biometrics and Security, Research & National Laboratory of Pattern Recognition, Institute of Automation, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China

    Stan Z. Li

  2. Departments of Computer Science and Engineering, Michigan State University, East Lansing, MI, USA

    Anil K. Jain

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© 2015 Springer Science+Business Media New York

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Cavoukian, A., Stoianov, A. (2015). Encryption, Biometric. In: Li, S.Z., Jain, A.K. (eds) Encyclopedia of Biometrics. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4899-7488-4_63

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