7 Facts About Fingerprint Attendance Systems

7 Reasons to use Fingerprint Attendance Systems

With the integration of biometric devices for attendance and access control in the business industry, things have become more organized and hassle-free. Encouraging and monitoring attendance is also one of the positive effects. Several types of biometric devices use different means to identify a person which helps IT managed services through monitoring of each building. It includes facial recognition, voice recognition, hand geometry, retina scan, vein, and fingerprint recognition.

Fingerprint recognition is the most common and is mostly installed by the IT support within building premises. It’s been around for quite some time now and it helps prevent tampered records of working hours which is a common violation possible with a manual paper attendance system. There’s more to fingerprint recognition devices that many of us might not know. Check them out below:

1. Legal Implications

Before companies can install and start using biometric devices for attendance and access control systems, they have to abide by certain legal implications.

First, the organizations need to put forward a policy for privacy and storage and usage of personal information such as a fingerprint. The key elements of the policy cover:

• A clear and easily accessible statement of its policies and practices
• The type of personal information being gathered and collected
• How and why the personal information is being gathered and collected and for what it will be used for
• Disclosure of the data
• Security practices and policies

Second, organizations should do the following before collecting personally identifiable data like fingerprints.

• Make sure to aware people within the organization that data will be collected
• Inform them of the reason why the information is collected
• Who will be receiving the information
• The organization that is collecting as well as that which is retaining the information. Make sure that the name and address of the organization is included or at least mentioned.

Lastly, the organization also has to provide the person an option not to give information or to withdraw the consent if they are not willing to do so for the information to be stored at any time.

2. Different devices store fingerprints differently

For security purposes, the actual fingerprints are not recorded, and the system does not store any fingerprint images. Instead, the software extracts the unique features of each fingerprint
and creates a mathematical presentation like the addition of a new ridge, called a " fingerprint template." This template varies from the device and can only be used to identify a person for check-in and check-out purposes. It cannot be used to recreate or re-engineer the original fingerprint. For further security of the template, it will be encrypted. It is for this reason that no privacy or identity theft is done.

“..fingerprints can hardly be recognized as time goes by.”

3. Fingerprints sometimes won’t be recognized

Sometimes it is hard to recognize fingerprints. It’s either the fingerprint recognition is scratched by metal objects, such as coins, keys, and necklaces, or the screen protector supplied with the device caused the fingerprint recognition sensor to malfunction. Just remove the screen protector when you scan your fingerprint to improve fingerprint sensitivity.

There are a lot of things that could affect the fingerprints scanner. One of which is when your fingerprint recognition area is wet or sweating.

Whenever you have your finger scanned, make sure that it is clean and dry, and also cover the entire fingerprint recognition sensor with your finger. To improve recognition performance, register the hands of the people in the building that are most often used to perform tasks on the device.

In addition, our fingerprints can hardly be recognized as time goes by.  Hence, the fingerprint may not always be an accurate identification system, especially over time.

4. Biometrics are vulnerable and can be hacked

We all think that if we are utilizing biometrics, we are already safe. Sad to say, we are wrong about that. Because just like the password protection system, biometric security measures can also be hacked very easily and sensitive information could fall into the wrong hands. The hacking of data could happen anywhere. Even high-profile data that tend to be secured on a stronger level are not safe, since, biometric information will be available in more places that may not employ the same level of secure storage.

As I’ve mentioned, biometrics now has become commonplace that people become complacent. Some have stopped using some common-sense security measures because they think that biometrics will be enough to solve their security problems. Little do they know, that the data stored in their biometric database has become more vulnerable which leads to compromising biometric data, and you will no longer have control.

And once you are hacked, hackers will make use of it for wrongful purposes. The same thing happened in the year 2017, whereas the biometric collected data for the Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) was hacked and the security breach has caused a lot of damage.

5. Fingerprints tend to change more rapidly for blue-collar workers

Blue-collar workers are those in manual labor such as manufacturing, mining, sanitation, custodial work, power plant operations, farming, landscaping, pest control, waste disposal, and recycling, electrical, plumbing, construction, and many other types of physical work. Their work often involves building infrastructures and they are required to use different tools and machines for an extended period of time. Due to the nature of their work, it could cause them to get their skin split or puffy which tends to alter the unique fingerprint on their thumbs.  Hence, the initial fingerprint pattern taken and stored on the device is likely to be different from the current pattern, making the biometric device unable to recognize their fingerprints as they significantly change from when they were collected over time.

6. Putting your biometric devices closer to magnets causes malfunctions

Researches show that there are a few things that you should never place near magnets especially with technologies because nowadays devices are often compromised of magnetic materials, meaning that they can be damaged when they come face-to-face with high-powered magnets.

Sad to say that one of those few things that should never place near magnets is biometric devices. It is because it is considered a storage device that stores the fingerprint features of the registered person by using magnetic tape and once the biometric device is brought near into a magnetic field, a magnet could erase all the data that is being stored within.

7. Updating biometric data over time is much needed

Updates offer plenty of benefits. It can add new features to the program and repair some security holes that a hacker can take advantage of and target its vulnerability.

Everyone deserves the latest and greatest. So don’t get fall behind because updates are really all about IT security services. It can get your program a new shot of stability and no more crashing if there is. The best is it can boost your program performance at its highest speed.  Because just like biometric data like a fingerprint can change over time, every biometric device also needs to be updated regularly.

Conclusion

What we have discussed above are the seven facts that you may not know, but now that you’ve read and learned about them. Now, we’ll share with you some common-sense security measures to help you protect your biometric data before you leave this blog.

• Set your passwords stronger to make it harder to steal your data and make it more invulnerable.
• Keeping your biometric information is only a few limited places will limit hackers to breach your data.
• Do not ignore when you get notified to update your biometric information. It is one of the best ways to secure your data and help reduce the vulnerability to security flaws. Keep your operating system and internet security software updated.