Biometrics

4. Challenges and Countermeasures

The main question that one needs to address when designing a privacy-preserving biometric authentication protocol is: How to guarantee privacy-preservation without downgrading the accuracy of a biometric authentication system?

Among the most challenging problems in designing efficient and privacy-preserving biometric authentication systems there are (1) the resistance to impersonation attacks; (2) the irrevocability of biometric templates; and (3) guarantee that personal information remains private. In the following, we provide a list of methods that have been used to achieve privacy-preserving authentication, and we highlight the main advantages and disadvantages of each approach.