The poor man's biometric: Identifying cost-effective biometric system criteria for SMMEs

Decreases in biometric sensor manufacturing costs have helped push the proliferation of biometric systems across industries. Biometric systems are finally within the reach of mainstream markets, but the uptake of these systems for authentication is still hindered by the decision-making stage in many organisations (especially small or medium size enterprises). For these decision makers, cost is an important factor and the unfortunate reality is even though sensors are becoming more affordable, deciding which biometric to use (selection) and evaluating them is not. Extensive research and skills are required to find the best match for their unique environment and without these resources, the organisation risks deployment failure. While research does exist for the effectiveness of certain biometrics in very specific environments, knowledge of their performance in other environments, along with the cost of deployment is very limited. This problem of uncertainty with regards to costs is further propagated by organisations that simply choose the cheapest option irrespective of whether the option is in fact viable for their environment. In order to help bridge the gap of uncertainty, the paper defines a biometric selection process and identifies evaluation criteria that are relevant to their unique environments, which should aid in the decision-making process in low cost environments. The authors then present recommendations, such as need assessment, vendor awareness, standard conformance, independent evaluations and the reduction of system modularity to address organisation uncertainty. By following these recommendations, biometric selection and evaluation is possible with fewer resources without a significant risk to deployment failure.