New biometric technology will identify you through your 'heartprint'

Moneycontrol News

With the iPhone X, the smartphone market leader Apple has indicated that fingerprint sensors are out and facial recognition is the new biometric technology.

However, that does not prevent scientific research from presenting more interesting alternatives on the horizon.

New technology researchers from the University of Buffalo have now come up with a new cybersecurity system that uses radars to read your personal heart rate signature.

“We have developed this non-contract and continuous heart biometric system using the new Doppler radar sensor,” said Wenyao Xu, an assistant professor in University of Buffalo’s department of computer science and engineering told Digital Trends.

The sensor works like a Wi-Fi router and sends out a wireless signal and receives the bounced-back signal coupled with the user’s heart motion and geometrical traits.

These digital 'heartprints' can be used to identify customers as each individual has unique heart traits.

Heart signatures vs face recognition and fingerprint biometrics

The first advantage of these is security since face and fingerprint data can be more easily obtained by hackers while heart-based biometrics are invisible, apart from being illegal to gather.

Collecting the heart print also does not require the person to perform any physical activity.

It is also possible to carry out continuous authentication. Computers and mobile devices can log out automatically when their established owner disappears and logging back automatically as soon as they return.

The system needs 8 seconds to scan a heart for the first time and thereafter it can monitor by continuously keep recognising that heart.

It has also been proven to be safe, similar to any other Wi-Fi device, emitting less than 1 percent of the radiation from a regular smartphone.

After 78 tests with various subjects, the accuracy of the devices on this new technology is more than 98 percent.

Researchers will soon recruit another 500 and 1000 volunteers to further validate the system and they plan to commercialise it.