Securing Tomorrow of Next-Generation Technologies with Biometrics, State-of-The-Art Techniques, Open Challenges, and Future Research Directions

In the recent past, the increasing use of online applications, from simple food orders to complex banking services, has highlighted the need for strong and reliable network security measures. Traditional password-based authentication schemes have proven vulnerable to various cyber threats, including password guessing, keylogging, phishing, and credential theft, etc. To address these challenges, the research community has turned its attention to biometric technologies as a promising solution for Next-Generation Technologies security. These biometrics technologies use the physiological and behavioral characteristics of humans to verify or confirm their identity in many NGTs such as smartphones, computers, banking systems, and border control systems, etc. However, these NGTs faces several key challenges in the context of biometric systems. This is because the biometrics features change a lot with age, or once someone passes away, compared to the collected data when the person was alive. Therefore, these systems face multidirectional challenges. First, the attackers can use different techniques to compromise the security of an application. Secondly, the disparities inherent in biometric technologies pose significant challenges to their effective implementation because they rely on specific human features such as irises, fingerprints, and faces, etc. Considering that, we conducted a comprehensive survey over the past decade. This survey aimed to identify both the strengths and weaknesses of existing biometric techniques used in NGTs, with the goal of setting the path for future research that can enhance the security of these technologies. Furthermore, it is crucial to address the question of why this paper is necessary, given the presence of several survey papers on the same topic. To answer this question, our work offers several unique contributions based on the undermentioned factors: (i:) Firstly, it familiarizes the reader with the taxonomy of biometrics, followed by enabling technologies and use cases in the context of NGTs, which are ignored in most published papers. (ii:) Secondly, it meticulously examines the reliability of mostly used biometric authentication techniques by highlighting their strong and weak aspects to underscore the research gaps. (iii:) Thirdly, our paper thoroughly explores the requirements of biometric technologies in the context of NGTs to support the literature arguments regarding their inefficiency in meeting the demands of emerging technologies. Moreover, this work provides insights into both the achievements made thus far and the areas that still require attention to enhance the reliability of biometric systems. (iv:) Fourthly, it highlights the open challenges that current biometric methods struggle to overcome in futuristic technologies. (v:) Lastly, we propose research directions with the aim of addressing the highlighted open challenges and maintaining the trust of all stakeholders in biometric technologies.