biometric pertaining to the measurement of the human
body: in security terms, relating to means of authen-
tication based on patterns unique to an individual’s
body, such as fingerprints and retinal patterns, or
behaviour, such as voiceprints or handwriting
BIOS Basic Input/Output System, the “hardwired”
firmware programming used to start the boot process
in ISA/Wintel computers.The BIOS is located in
the ROM area of the system and is usually stored
permanently.There are many BIOS versions in
ISA/Wintel computers, but they generally assume
the operating system will be interrupt driven (as
MS-DOS is), and start to set up structures to sup-
port that model. Since boot sector infectors run before
the operating system starts, and require only the
BIOS pro