Windows 10 actually innovates, do you?
With all the new Windows laptops coming with new Windows fingerprint readers for the Windows Hello feature, you might be asking how you can get this feature on your desktop. Or, you may also be asking you can get this feature on an old laptop that you refuse to upgrade. At UnrivaledPro, we’re always looking for ways to get to our games faster. Lucky for you (and us), AuthenTrend has released a Nano USB Fingerprint Reader just for this. It’s a fairly new item, but we found that works pretty flawlessly overall. Now remember that this only works with Windows 10 and the Windows Hello feature being enabled. I put the sensor in a USB port on the top of my desktop so I could easily unlock my machine.
Bio-metrics and the Windows Fingerprint Reader
Bio-metrics really are the future with their arguably insane security. It’s harder to break a finger print that it is to break a password. The cool thing with this fingerprint reader is that it gathers your fingerprint every time you log in and as it continues to learn it continues to log you in faster. The USB dongle is very small, about the size of a Bluetooth receiver for a keyboard or mouse. You can also have multiple accounts log in to a machine as the fingerprint reader supports up to 80 different fingerprints. At its relatively low price tag, it’s definitely worth the convenience which you gain. You no longer have to type in your password or Windows pin to get your device.
There’s two numbers that we need to keep in our minds with biometrics here. The first is the FAR or false acceptance rate. This is the number of times it will in inappropriately let someone login with an incorrect fingerprint. This USB claims to have a false acceptance rate of less than .0002 percent – we found this claim to be largely backed up as we tried all our fingers (and our toes) to try and break in. The next number that’s important here is the FRR or false rejection rate. The FRR tells you how often you’ll be incorrectly rejected. The new USB fingerprint reader claims to have a less than a 3% rate so you should rarely get a false reading. We felt that this number may be inflated somewhat (at least at the beginning as the reader learns your print).
Conclusion
In our testing we found the finger printer to work pretty flawlessly and it really did increase the speed with which of the log into our machines. We found the machine learning algorithm to actually hold quite true and it made a big difference after a few days. All you have to do is plug it into a free USB port and leave it there. I guess you could argue that it does permanently take up a USB port, if you’re limited on those. It has a very easy plug and play set up as there’s no set up disk. Once plugged in, it automatically installs the drivers. All you really need to do is register your fingerprint and make sure that your computer is Windows Hello enabled.
There is a downside in that the unlocking function only works with a computer coming on from sleep mode, but you might go to change that in settings (or just don’t let your computer hibernate). It may also be a little bit fidgety until you find the right place to set your finger. Once you have experimented and figured it out, you should have no problem getting in consistently. With increasing risks in security today, more and more users have extremely long and complex passwords being required of them. A Windows fingerprint reader that plugs into a USB port is the best solution I found to meeting my security needs without pulling my hair out.
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