1. What is biometrics ?

Biometrics is an automated system of recognizing a person based upon physical or behavior characteristics. It is a system that recognizes a person based on "who you are" instead of "what you have" or "what you know". There are four stages for security recognition:

• What you know: Password, Pin Code
• What you have: Token, Key, ID, License, Passport, Card
• What you are: Biometrics
• When and where you act: Combination of Time and Location

Things that you know or you have like password or card could be lost, stolen, or duplicated. They do not necessarily authenticate the person using the card or knowing the password, while biometrics recognize a person by his/her natural born human characteristics or his/her costumed behavior. Fingerprint is the most frequently applied physical characteristics in biometrics.

Other physical characteristics applied to biometrics are iris, palm (shape and print), voice and face. The behaviors applied to biometrics are voice, signature and keystroke. Recently, vein is also applied on biometrics. Among those, fingerprint verification is still the most recognized technology for good performance and price. Combination of either two or three of the above mentioned four stages will improve security even better; ex. card + fingerprint + pin no. or fingerprints + priority of different fingerprints. However, no matter which is included in the combination, at least one kind of biometrics is the only insurance of connecting authentication to the real and correct person.

2. What are FAR (False Acceptance Rate) and FRR (False Rejection Rate) ?

FAR (False Acceptance Rate): Rate that a biometrics system falsely identifies different features as identical Represents security level.
FRR (False Rejection Rate): Rate that identical features are identified as different Represents convenient level.
STARTEK FAR : 1/100,000 ~ 1/1,000,000 STARTEK FRR: 1/30 ~ 1/100

3. What is security level ?

Security level is set by the threshold matching scores. When setting security level high, i.e. setting threshold scores high, FAR reduces while FRR raises. In referring to the following picture, the cross area among X-axis, Curve B and threshold line (Area B) stands for FAR, and the cross area among X-axis, Curve A and the threshold line (Area A) stands for FRR. Then when the threshold line moves toward right, i.e. raise the security level, Area B shrinks while Area A expands. Security level will be various for different applications. The picture next to "Security Level & FAR & FRR" shows different security level demand for market segments and STARTEK's FAR vs. FRR curve.

4. What is the size of a fingerprint template by STARTEK's technology ?

STARTEK's standard size is 256bytes per fingerprint including owner data and fingerprint description. However, when verification, it only needs 160 bytes per fingerprint minutia. The size could be reduced as small as 100 bytes per customer request.

5. What's the speed of verification and identification by STARTEK's technology ?

After image is captured, the process to extract digital minutia features from the analog image and to match takes less than one second. The most of the second is spent on feature extraction. If counting the time of catching the image, it takes about 2 second to complete a verification. For database of 50 persons with two fingers enrolled each, we can ensure it takes less than 1 sec to complete identification process. For larger database, it will need more time to complete identification. The speed depends on the performance of CPU.

6. Can the data of a template be stolen or re-introduced played back to a computer to gain unauthorized access to the system ?

No, it cannot happen. As our database is digital minutiae information extracted by our special algorithm, it's just a group of digits and impossible to be re-introduced played back. If the digital information is stolen, the fully matched information does not get authorization by STARTEK products, because in normal situation the input data should be different every time in consideration of some miscellaneous signals are also caught in addition to the minutiae data.

7. Does STARTEK API work with other biometric devices ?

Yes, the API of STARTEK driver can connect to different readers from different manufactures, like STARTEK, V brand, S brand, A brand, I brand. It also can verify the fingerprint data from different readers.