A review of facial biometrics security for smart devices

Abstract

Biometrics play an avid role in today’s mobile security realm. Security experts have attempted to implement different forms of biometrics, from finger, hand, and signature to voice, retina, and iris. Recently, facial biometrics has been added to this list and has introduced another method for a more secure form of authentication. Various organizations believe that by using something you are, like biometrics, their system would be strongly secured. As this may be true, applications used for facial biometrics have lost their credibility when easily defeated. This may be through printed photographs, electronic images, and even look alike. This paper explores the scientific background as to why facial biometrics have become a trusted form of authentication, a user-friendly method, and explores the security of mobile device applications available for Android and iOS systems. We test several applications with our developed methods and discuss the results.