Biometric authentication for ID cards with hologram watermarks

We present an analysis of a new technique for the authentication of ID cardholders, based on the integration of a biometrics-based authentication system with digital watermarks. The chosen biometric authentication method is the dynamic signature verification of the ID cardholder, while we use a specific integrity watermark technique we developed, called Hologram Watermark, to embed and retrieve the off-line data onto an ID card. We take advantage of the fact, that two static biometric features (images of the user's face and signature) are already integral part of ID cards for manual verification and extent the stored biometric information by embedding on-line handwriting features of the signature as holographic watermarks in the overall image information of an ID card. Manipulation of any of the image information can be detected and will further disallow biometric verification of the forger. The Hologram Watermark technique produces content-related data using computer-generated hologram coding techniques. These data are embedded with watermarking techniques into the personal data printed on an ID card. The content-related data in this specific application are the dynamic features of the cardholder's signature. The main goal of this paper is to analyze the suitability of dynamic signature verification in combination with the Hologram Watermark technique, to facilitate automated user authentication based on information transparently embedded in ID cards.