Lacie SAFE Mobile Hard Drive White Paper

LaCie SAFE Hard Drive

Biometric Access

&

Data Encryption

What is biometrics?

The term refers to the emerging field of technology devoted to the
identification of individuals using biological traits. Biometrics automated
methods of recognition measure individuals’ physical or behavioral
characteristics. Common physical biometrics include fingerprints, hand
or palm geometry, and retina, iris, or facial characteristics. Behavioral
characteristics include signature, voice (which also has a physical
component), keystroke pattern, and gait. Of this class of biometrics,
technologies for signature and voice are the most developed.

Fingerprint-based biometrics looks for minutia, which are the points on a
fingerprint where a ridge ends or splits in two.

What kind of biometric technology is used in the
SAFE drive?

The LaCie SAFE Hard Drive integrates active fingerprint-sensing
technology. Each sensor cell (pixel) contains an active capacitive
feedback circuit whose effective feedback capacitance is modulated by
the presence of live skin close to the surface of the sensor. For instance,
the sensor can’t match the fingerprint of a deceased person. In contrast
to optical sensors with panels, capacitive sensors—also called “solid
state”—are difficult to imitate. Solid state technology enables sensing
the skin capacity variation of a finger. For example, if you draw a line
using ink on your fingertip, the image in solid state won’t show the line.
Solid state technology is based on sensing the finger—not looking at it
the way optical detection does.

The silicon fingerprint sensor integrated into the LaCie SAFE drive
produces a full, clean image around all portions of the finger that
come in contact with the sensor. Optical solutions can produce edges
of the image that are not crisp because sensors only focus on a small
area. With our fingerprint sensor, the risk of non-matching between the
fingerprint and the stored biometric data are very low thanks to this
superior image quality.

Integrating a swiping fingerprint sensor minimizes corruption risks. It is
extremely hard for end-users to copy a fingerprint because the finger
movement immediately eliminates any possible traces. Many low-cost
optical solutions can be compromised by a simple photocopy of a
fingerprint. Some low-cost optical solutions also have problems with
latent fingerprints being left on the sensor by grimy hands.

What is fingerprint recognition?

Fingerprint matching is by far the most successful biometric technology
because of its ease of use, non-intrusiveness and reliability. Fingerprints
consist of ridges and valleys formed in complex patterns that are unique
for every person and thereby provide an optimal verification method.
Rather than scan each ridge, fingerprint-based biometrics looks for
minutia, which are the points on a fingerprint where a ridge ends or
splits into two. An algorithm extracts the most promising minutia points
from an image and then creates a template, usually between 250 to
1,000 bytes in size.

At registration (enrollment) the minutia points are located and the
relative positions to each other and their directions are recorded. This
data forms the template—the information later used to authenticate a
person. At the matching stage, the incoming fingerprint image is pre­processed and the minutia points are extracted. The minutia points are
compared with the registered template, trying to locate as many similar
points as possible within a certain boundary. The result of the matching
is usually the number of matching minutiae. A threshold is then applied,
determining how large this number needs to be for the fingerprint and
the template to match.

Fingerprint verification is well adapted to access-controlled devices. In
fact, this biometric technology is easy-to-use and well accepted compared
to other identification technologies. Fingerprint verification also has a
lower error incidence rate in comparison to other biometrics solutions.

By integrating all fingerprint-matching technology into the hardware,
the LaCie SAFE Hard Drive is a fully self-contained drive that does not
have to rely on the host computer to perform fingerprint matching. This
maintains full portability for the user by eliminating the need to install
any driver software on the host computer prior to use.

With our fingerprint sensor, the risk of non-matching between the fingerprint and
the stored biometric data are very low thanks to this superior image quality.