What’s a biometric laptop?

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Biometric laptops offer high-tech security through fingerprinting, iris scanning, or voice recognition. Fingerprint readers are the most common and secure, while iris scanners are expensive and delicate. Voice recognition is the least common and easiest to fake. These features provide an extra layer of security but also have their own problems.

For people interested in protecting important computer information, a biometric laptop is the best choice. While most computers are protected by one or more passwords, these laptops require data that is nearly impossible to hack. Biometric security, which requires fingerprinting, iris scanning, or voice recognition, is a growing phenomenon in computers. The added security of a biometric laptop is a nice feature, but its high-tech security system isn’t without its problems.

Having a fingerprint reader is the most important type of biometric security for laptops. This is a small window at the bottom of a keyboard or even built into a mouse that acts just like a scanner, but scans your fingerprints. Users save fingerprint scans to a security database and set up security just like they would a written password. To gain control of the computer, the user simply applies a finger to the scanner and reads the unique strokes of that print to grant access.

A less common but equally protective form of security for a biometric laptop is iris scanning. This is usually a small scanner external to the computer. Like the fingerprint scanner, the user places an eye on this camera and allows the iris to be scanned, saving it to a database within the computer. When the user wants to start the computer, he is asked to check the scanner, and when the iris matches the database, the computer will grant the user access. If there is no match, that person will be denied.

Another form of biometric laptop security is voice recognition. This feature is the least common of the three because it is the easiest to fake. Where the other two take on raw human characteristics, this biometric device stores aspects of a voice’s pitch, timbre and sound. If the user’s entry matches the stored criteria, the security system allows him to use that biometric laptop.

These biometric laptop security features provide an extra layer of security for users, but also present problems that simple text-based passwords don’t have. Speech recognition software often doesn’t recognize the user’s speech if he doesn’t speak clearly enough and this can cause a lot of frustration. Iris scanners offer a high level of security but can be expensive and delicate. Fingerprint scanners do not store the exact fingerprint but rather a series of dots on a printout and therefore are prone to many false negatives, sometimes preventing access to the correct person.




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