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Monday, June 25, 2012

Consider Adding a Layer of Biometric Security

By Daniel Turbin


We all take security pretty seriously. Gone forever are the days when most of us would go to sleep at night before locking the house up. The same goes with protecting a company's assets, be they info or otherwise.

A great many facilities have magnetic key-card controlled security doors, password gates over their web systems, stout firewalls, and suchlike but if you're searching for one more protective layer, then one specific thing to consider would be biometric security devices.

These most commonly take the form of fingerprint or retinal scanners, and are made these days, even to work on PC's, such that an individual workstation will not function unless the would-be user scans his or her thumb print on a reader.

Such systems provide an extra layer of security that's comparatively hard to defeat. Fingerprints and the human retina are unique for each individual, and relatively tricky to reproduce ( though not unlikely, it should be said ). While bearing that in mind such systems are handy only insofar as they control access to categorical pieces of technology, or specific physical areas of your building ( a retinal scanner controlling access to a doorway leading to a sensitive area of the company, or a thumbprint scanner controlling access to a particular workstation, for instance ).

In the case of workstation control , however , such protection could be rendered moot if that device is hooked up to a LAN, or to the web, because those connections open up the possibility for remote access of the machine, so it's not a bullet explanation solution, and shouldn't be treated as such.

And anyway, next time you've a network security audit prepared, this is one more thing to consider, and another possible defensive layer for your company to utilize. If you haven't had a security audit conducted recently, then I would encourage you to do it. A once a year audit is good not only for confidence, but also because network security is so dynamic and liquid that a continual check is in order if only to be sure you have not left yourself open to attack!



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