Abstract
Increasing international communications in volume and diversity (physical or virtual)
as well as increasing threats (terrorism, piracy...) appeal for a need to identify individuals. Indeed, important issues raise the numbers of terrorists, criminals and so on. People can prove their identity through what they own (objects), what they know (immaterial passes) and what they are (Biometrics). Many access controls fail because they use classical tools to identify people and grant them access, i.e. card, key, password... The fact is that people tend to accumulate codes and finally forget them, they can lose their keys as well, and their passes can be stolen: identification should be based on individuals' characteristics. Biometrics are the real-time identification of a person by measuring his/her unique and particular characteristics and comparing them to a database. The physiological category tends to be more reliable because these characteristics are better resistant to stress and are less prone to change during your lifetime (a face will vary with the age of an individual for example, but fingerprints, iris, voice, DNA, blood...are very stable).
