Digital forensic and biometric analysis for information security and network management

Abstract

The high deployment rate of information systems and networks by governments, colleges, enterprises, individuals, and institutions indicates rapid development of information and communication networks, making effective security mechanisms highly demanded. However, identity convergence introduces additional security and privacy challenges (attacks/threats) which the common conventional and knowledge based security mechanisms such as passwords, PINs, and tokens are inadequate to address. In this work, a review of existing authentication systems design was conducted and the result was the design and implementation of a prototype biometric fingerprint authentication and identification system using North-West University as the implementation domain. Using the prototype, a biometric fingerprint analysis was carried out to determine the uniqueness of each individuals fingerprint using MATLAB. Also conducted was data recovery analysis of an encrypted PDF document using the Advanced PDF Password Recovery forensic tool, the essence of which is to test the viability and usability of the forensic technology. The results from the biometric fingerprint analysis shows that installing fingerprint biometrics authentication as an identification measure provides proper identification and complete information privacy compared to other security platforms. The prototype also enables data in encrypted form to be decrypted for further analysis to be carried out on the data.