An Energy Efficient Multi Finger Biometric Digital Locker for Safeguarding Physical Files: Design, Security Evaluation and Power Modelling

Abstract

Even when digital document systems have been implemented, physical files are still necessary in offices, educational institutions, banks, archives, and legal settings. The main problem of relying on paper files is that they can be lost or stolen. However, digital lockers are insecure since they are based on conventional means of security that can be lost, shared, seen, duplicated, circumvented, or bypassed. This work describes a secure digital locker system for protecting physical files that integrates Internet of Things, biometrics, and four sensor systems, and includes an energy efficient management system. The proposed system contains a file latching and locking system, four fingerprint pods, a low power control module, a display module, a tamper evidence system, and an internal locking and latching system that opens after meeting the configured authentication requirement. The construction and offered simulations of the system are used to evaluate three domains of performance; the discrimination capacity of the biometrics, the system's energy use and efficiency, and the security provided by the system in relation to the most common attacks, both physical and logical. The four sensor system design achieves an overall sample equal error rate of 3.94 % at the 0.50 threshold, while the energy management system in the design decreased power consumption during the authentication process by 74 %. A 12.2 Wh lithium ion cell battery model estimates 2.8 years of potential operation with an approximate average of twenty unlocks per day. The study shows that the proposed system offers a valuable moderate solution for balancing robust file access control with the ability for long periods of operation. However, extensive user trials, liveness tests, and environmental stress tests must be conducted before this system can be deployed in an institution.