Privacy-Preserving Biometric System for Secure Fingerprint Authentication

Privacy is an important concern when biometrics are used in authentication systems for accessing Electronic Health Records (EHR) or other biomedical research data repositories involving human subjects. Biometrics of individuals deserve careful protection because they contain sensitive information closely related to personal privacy (e.g., personal health, ethnic group, etc.) and the leakage of such information can be used to re-identify individuals. More importantly, biometrics are unique and they are not easily revocable. Existing secure biometric systems prevent attackers from collecting unprotected biometrics in databases, however, they cannot guarantee confidentiality in probing and transmitting biometrics.