A Conceptual Technique for Deriving Encryption Keys from Fingerprints to Secure Fingerprint Templates in Unimodal Biometric Systems

Abstract

In this study, we reviewed biometric template protection schemes in subsisting literature and established that there is no reliable, efficacious and foolproof technique that assures diversity, revocability, security and optimal performance as is required of an ideal biometric template security scheme. This status of affairs motivated us to contrivance an approach that derives biometric encryption keys from biometric fingerprint templates. The technique we proposed involves a two-step enrollment and authentication of fingerprints while encrypting fingerprint templates with encryption keys derived from other biometric fingerprint templates before archiving them to a database. The system was implemented using Java, developed on Netbeans 8.0 IDE, MySQL RDBMS was used for back-end database and utilized Source AFIS java library framework for fingerprint verification and identification. Test results were carried out to determine the system’s efficacy.