BIOMETRIC AUTHENTICATION APPARATUS AND METHOD

A biometric authentication apparatus includes processing apparatuses allocated with biometric data to be matched, a storage unit that stores a distribution of the biometric data for each of a plurality of quality levels, and an authentication processing time required by an authentication process of each of the processing apparatuses, and a management apparatus. The management apparatus extracts first and second processing apparatuses from the processing apparatuses based on the authentication processing time, identifies a quality level for which a difference between the distributions of the first and second processing apparatuses is greater than or equal to a threshold value, and exchanges the biometric data having the identified quality level between the first and second processing apparatuses.