The impact of government employees using biometrics in IT security management at KZN Treasury.

Abstract

The aim of this study is to analyse the different opinions, draw up a balance, and determine the impact of biometrics on users that are using it as their IT security control, especially in financial systems that are used at KZN Provincial Treasury viz Basic Accounting System and Persal. It outlines the strengths and weaknesses, as well as discover the theoretical or conceptual frameworks to be used to examine this phenomenon. This study will assist in enabling to determine impact of using the Biometrics security technology on employees of the KZN Treasury. Today biometrics has been successfully deployed in various fields like security, identification and authorization system. Biometrics fingerprint has gained significant importance in this technical world for analysing of biological data. Biometrics is a technology that is used for analysing person characters based on physiological traits such as the face, fingerprint, iris, retina, voice, signature, etc. The KZN Treasury introduced biometrics systems to increase security on Basic Accounting System and Persal. Biometrics serves as a crucial point to resolve issues relating to personal identification and verification technology. The Biometrics fingerprint is used to establish one’s identity in order to minimize fraud within Government Departments. It ensures that acceptable access measures are implemented to protect crucial systems by providing secured access control. The biometrics system at KZN Treasury prevents information loss and unauthorised access and ensures that adequate non-repudiation measures are implemented. It also gives an audit trail of sensitive transactions with the information kept in a secured and protected database. The quantitative method is used for collecting data. The research tool used was a questionnaire with three groups of participants the managers, enrolment officers and employees or users. The five-point Likert scale questionnaire is used to gather the relevant data for analysis and interpretation as well as drawing relevant conclusions and recommendations. The findings in this study were analysed in detail to be able to produce a precise data analysis. The conclusion of the study is that the use of the Biometrics security system has created a good impact on the work performance of the employees of the KZN Treasury. It seems that most of the respondents believe that Biometrics has had a significant and positive effect on the level of work performance. This study only touches on four areas of Biometrics, which are Perceived Usefulness, Perceived Ease of Use (user satisfaction and organizational impact), Influencing Factors and Technology and Security. This study is not aimed to cover a full and detailed list of biometric techniques.