Advanced IT Topic 1

Running head: ADVANCED IT TOPIC

Advanced IT Topic

TS8004: Information Technology Research and Practice

Introduction

The purpose of this paper will be to evaluate two emerging technologies, grid computing

and biometrics security. This paper in its entirety will summarize each technology, analysis the

advantages and disadvantages that are provided, address the challenges that each field of

research is currently facing, provide one application description and identify research

opportunities in each field of study.

Biometrics

Today securing an individual’s privacy and stopping identity theft has become a major

priority in every line of business. For it’s very important for a business to establish an end-to-end

trust among all parties within a transaction. Biometrics, which is considered one of the most

effective and safest methods of security, attempts to battle identity theft and privacy issues by

providing a more secure means of authentication and authorization. Biometrics has the ability to

accurately identify an individual based upon the person’s unique physical or behavioral

characteristics. The basic working principle of any biometric system is to unobtrusively match

patterns of live individuals in real time against enrolled records which are recorded in a database

(Famila and Irudhayaraj, 2011).

There are many advantages to incorporating a biometrics system into an existing

infrastructure that far out-weigh traditional authentication methods such as; biometrics provides

the advantage of automatically knowing who did what where and when, it reduces fraud by

employing hard-to-forge technologies and materials and it eliminates problems caused by lost

IDs or forgotten hard-to-remember passwords. Biometrics technology also contains several

drawbacks also like; it's more expensive and requires more software and hardware resources to

install, this disadvantage which organizations consider the most important is due to fact that it’s

hard to determine the return on investment with such a system.

Biometrics technology has also been plagued with a multitude of challenges like business

issues, operational issues and people issues which have crippled global acceptance of it as the

authentication method of choice. Some business issues stem around the challenge of integrating

the system within an existing system, Chandra and Calderon (2005) support this with the

following statement “When biometrics are a component of the internal control system, the
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challenge is to strategically link and integrate it with other controls to protect business systems”

(Chandra & Calderon, 2005, p. 102) .Operational issues stem from security concerns around the

enrolment process and storage models. People issues, which are common, are usually based

around building confidence in the systems capabilities.

One method of application used today with biometrics is through Online Application /

Website Security. Due to the ever increasing threats to internet security, more and more secure

websites are turning to multiple passwords or verification of "secret answers" and personal

information in order to authenticate users. Unfortunately these additional methods of

authentication have not deterred the ongoing threats to classified information. Biometric security

online provides a stronger authentication by eliminating the use of passwords which can be lost,

and authenticates users by what they are, rather than what they know. The system works by

validating transactions by first requesting biometric authentication before orders are submitted or

financial transactions are executed.

The research opportunities available to biometric research is numerous, some of the most

common examples of the technology would be fingerprint recognition, iris recognition, face

recognition, hand geometry recognition, vein recognition, voice recognition and dynamic

signature recognition. But since biometrics technology has not yet delivered its promise as a

foolproof automatic human recognition system, the future possibilities of the technology is

endless. Jain et al., (2004) support this by stating the following:

It’s becoming increasingly clear that broader usage of biometric technologies is being

stymied by our lack of understanding of four fundamental problems: (i) How to

accurately and efficiently represent and recognize biometric patterns? (ii) How to

guarantee that the sensed measurements are not fraudulent? (iii) How to make sure that
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the application is indeed exclusively using pattern recognition for the expressed purpose

(function creep [16])? (iv) How to acquire repeatable and distinctive patterns from a

broad population (Jain et al., 2004, Abstract, para. 1).

Grid Computing

In a standard network system, a computer only has the capability of operating within the

limitations of its own resources. Grid computing systems works on the principle of pooling

resources together and sharing the load across multiple computers. This process provides the

means to complete complicated tasks more efficiently and allows researchers the ability to use

one computer to access and leverage the collected power of all the computers in the system.

There are many advantages to setting up a network system for grid computing, for

starters it helps to eliminate the need to buy large six figure symmetric multiprocessing (SMP)

servers, for the technology allows applications to be split up and farmed out to smaller

community type servers. Grid computing has also proven to utilize a much more efficient use of

idle resources and the upgrading to a grid topology can be done on the fly without scheduling

downtime. Even though grid computing provides many advantages it also contains several

disadvantages that must addressed, like the concern for processes and their results. Kos (2011)

explains that the results of all processes in a grid topology are sent first on all nodes within the

grid, and then collaboratively assessed before the final assessment is made, this can become a

problem for time sensitive results. Several other disadvantage of grid computing also exist like

the need to have a fast network connection between grid compute resources and also the concern

for political challenges associated with sharing resources.

Grid computing has had its share of challenges also along the way that have hindered its

adoption in the business arena. The issues which seem to be most challenging have to do with the

handling of the diversity that results from the vast range of technologies, both software and

hardware and the fact grid resources are spread across political and geographical boundaries

under the administrative control of different organizations.

There many grid computing applications in existence but the academics and research

organizations projects account for many of the systems currently in operation. One of the most

famous systems known that utilize grid computing applications would be The Search for

Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI) project. SETI utilizes Grid Technology to process its

calculations among other research facilities around the world.

There are a multitude of research opportunities available that will help to advance grid

computing’s overall acceptance into the business arena, Opiyo, Ayienga, Getao, Anderick and

Nowé (2011) supports this with the following statement:

Grid-computing specific items of enquiry include the creation of plug-and-play grid

computing solutions; the creation of transparent easy-to-use interfaces; managing

coordination of multiple resources for distributed applications; formulating effective

models for resource-sharing, access negotiation, execution monitoring and control,

communication protocols, resource usage accounting and pricing (Opiyo et al., 2011, p.

128).
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Conclusion

This paper in its entirety summarized and evaluated two emerging technologies,

biometrics and grid computing. This paper also discussed the advantages and disadvantages of

each technology, defined several challenges that would need to be addressed in order to move the

technologies forward, identified several research opportunities available and described an

application usage for the technologies.

References

Jain, K., Pankanti, S., Prabhakar, S., Hong, L., Ross, A., & Wayman, L. (2004). Biometrics: A

Grand Challenge (To appear in the Proceedings of International Conference on Pattern

Recognition, Cambridge, UK, Aug. 2004). Cambridge, UK: Michigan State University.

Opiyo, E., Ayienga, E., Getao, K., Anderick, B., & Nowé, A. (2011). [Computing Research

Challenges and Opportunities with Grid Computing]. Unpublished a paper examines the

current advances in grid computers.

Kos, B. (2011). Grid Computing - Definition and Disadvantages. Retrieved December 4, 2011,

from Bright Hub Web site: http://www.brighthub.com/environment/green-computing/

articles/107038.aspx

Chandra, A., & Calderon, T. (2005). Challenges and Constraints to the diffusion of Biometrics In

Information Systems. Communications of the Acm, 48(12), 102-106.

Famila, M., & Irudhayaraj, A. (2011). Iris recognition: An emerging security environment for

human identification. Comp. Tech. Appl, 2(6), 3023-3028.