New security mechanism for based Aadhaar authentication

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  • The Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) under the Ministry of Electronics & IT has successfully rolled out a new security mechanism for Aadhaar-based fingerprint authentication, and faster detection of spoofing attempts.

About

  • This security feature is an amalgamation of both Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML) technologies. 
  • It has been designed in-house by effectively using a “combination of both finger minutia and finger image” which was put forth with the aim of checking the liveness or genuineness of the fingerprint captured.

Benefits of New AI-Based System

  • The new security mechanism for Aadhaar-based fingerprint authentication has now become fully functional.
  • The move will be of immense use in segments including banking and financials, telecom and government sectors. 
  • It will further strengthen the Aadhaar-enabled payment system.
  • With the new system in place, only finger image or only finger minutiae-based Aadhaar authentication has given way to the robust two-factor authentication – a win-win for all stakeholders.

Aadhar Verification Transactions

  • The UIDAI Headquarters and its Regional Offices are connected with all entities for facilitating any user agency (not migrated) to switch over to the newly developed secured authentication mode as soon as possible.
  • The Aadhaar-based authentication transactions have been significantly adopted as it has resulted in availing several welfare benefits and services.
  • The total number of Aadhar authentication transactions was reportedly more than 88.29 billion by the end of December 2022. 
  • The average number of transactions per day increased to 70 million. 
    • Most of these are fingerprint-based authentications as it symbolizes their usage and utility in day-to-day lives.

About UIDAI

  • UIDAI is a statutory authority established under the provisions of the Aadhaar (Targeted Delivery of Financial and Other Subsidies, Benefits and Services) Act, 2016.
  • UIDAI was created with the objective to issue Unique Identification numbers (UID), named as “Aadhaar”, to all residents of India.
  • It comes under the Electronics & IT ministry.
  • It is responsible for Aadhaar enrolment and authentication, including operation and management of all stages of Aadhaar life cycle, Developing the policy, procedure and system for issuing Aadhaar numbers to individuals and Perform authentication and to ensure the security of identity information and authentication records of individuals.

Source:UIDAI

 
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