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Secure Fingerprint-Based User Authentication for Lotus Notes
N. Ratha, J. Connell, R. Bolle
ACM Multimedia and Security Workshop, October 2001.

Fingerprints have been used to identify people for several decades. With the advent of low cost inkless fingerprint scanners and the ample compute power available in client workstations, biometrics in general, and fingerprints in particular, are being considered for many secure authentication applications. Lotus Notes is a groupware product supporting e-mail, calendar management, workflow, and, perhaps more importantly, (shared) database access and management. Because of this wide spectrum of capabilities that allows true collaborative computing, privacy and security are of primary importance in such groupware applications. Lotus Notes has a strong reputation in this regard. In this paper, we describe the architecture of a system that integrates the intrinsic high security of Notes with the conveniences of fingerprints for client authentication. We discuss several design challenges that had to be addressed to achieve a successful product level system design and development. A demo of the finished system is also available.

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