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System Sensor Pool

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The system sensor pool is a collection of sharable biometric units that provide access to Windows authentication services. This pool is used by Winlogon, UAC, and any other client that associates a SID with a specific biometric template. Biometric units in the system pool:

  • Can be shared by multiple client applications.
  • Send event notices generated by the completion of biometric operations only to the application that has current window focus.
  • Use account SIDs to represent the template identities. All of the templates associated with a single user account are tagged with the SID assigned to that account.
  • Depend on trustworthy template storage provided by the Windows Biometric Service.

A biometric unit can be included in the system pool if it can be:

  • Configured to operate in basic mode and act only as a biometric capture device.
  • Configured to operate in advanced mode but has no onboard template storage. That is, it must use the storage adapter and template store supplied by Microsoft.
  • Configured to operate in advanced mode, contains onboard template storage, and can generate the required hashes.

When a new sensor device is plugged in, the Windows Biometric Service creates a biometric unit for it and tries to configure that unit for use by the system sensor pool. If the configuration is not successful, the biometric unit is placed in the unassigned sensor pool.

Private Sensor Pool

Sensor Pools

System Pool Behavior