10.2 Approach

Before · SP 800-76-1

After · SP 800-76-2

Approach

Before · SP 800-76-1

After · SP 800-76-2

FIPS 140-2 establishes minimum requirements for authentication for activation of cryptographic-modules. This Section defines analogous specifications for biometric person authentication. The specifications implement the primary security objective of using biometrics as an authentication factor. The approach is to require recognition algorithm operating thresholds to be set to achieve false match rates (FMR) no higher than those advanced here. These false match rates apply to zero-effort authentication, i.e., the one-to-one comparison of sample pairs from randomly selected different persons 24 . The false match criteria implement the core biometric security objectives. These are the primary interest of a security policy. While any false match criterion can always be met by setting a stringent 25 comparison threshold, the adoption of stringent thresholds will imply elevated false rejection rates (FNMR or FRR) because of the error-rate tradeoff 26 . High false rejection rates will inconvenience legitimate users, and it is therefore imperative that biometric systems offering sufficient performance are used – see Section 10.5 .