Physical security and environmental security are part of operational controls, and are measures taken to protect systems, buildings, and related supporting infrastructures against threats associated with their physical environment. All the questions above are useful in assessing physical access controls except for the one regarding operating system configuration, which is a logical access control. Source: SWANSON, Marianne, NIST Special Publication 800-26, Security Self-Assessment Guide for Information Technology Systems, November 2001 (Pages A-21 to A-24).

Identification and authentication is a technical measure that prevents unauthorized people (or unauthorized processes) from entering an IT system. Access control usually requires that the system be able to identify and differentiate among users. Reporting incidents is more related to incident response capability (operational control) than to identification and authentication (technical control). Source: SWANSON, Marianne, NIST Special Publication 800-26, Security Self-Assessment Guide for Information Technology Systems, November 2001 (Pages A-30 to A-32).

An automated login function for remote users would imply a weak authentication, thus certainly not a security goal. Source: TIPTON, Harold F. & KRAUSE, Micki, Information Security Management Handbook, 4th edition, volume 2, 2001, CRC Press, Chapter 5: An Introduction to Secure Remote Access (page 100).

A continuous authentication provides protection against impostors who can see, alter, and insert information passed between the claimant and verifier even after the claimant/verifier authentication is complete. This is the best protection against hijacking. Static authentication is the type of authentication provided by traditional password schemes and the strength of the authentication is highly dependent on the difficulty of guessing passwords. The robust authentication mechanism relies on dynamic authentication data that changes with each authenticated session between a claimant and a verifier, and it does not protect against hijacking. Strong authentication refers to a two-factor authentication (like something a user knows and something a user is). Source: TIPTON, Harold F. & KRAUSE, Micki, Information Security Management Handbook, 4th edition (volume 1), 2000, CRC Press, Chapter 3: Secured Connections to External Networks (page 51).

The only way to be truly positive in authenticating identity for access is to base the authentication on the physical attributes of the persons themselves (i.e., biometric identification). Physical attributes cannot be shared, borrowed, or duplicated. They ensure that you do identify the person, however they are not perfect and they would have to be supplemented by another factor.
Some people are getting thrown off by the term Masquarade. In general, a masquerade is a disguise. In terms of communications security issues, a masquerade is a type of attack where the attacker pretends to be an authorized user of a system in order to gain access to it or to gain greater privileges than they are authorized for. A masquerade may be attempted through the use of stolen logon IDs and passwords, through finding security gaps in programs, or through bypassing the authentication mechanism. Spoofing is another term used to describe this type of attack as well.
A UserId only provides for identification.
A password is a weak authentication mechanism since passwords can be disclosed, shared, written down, and more.
A smart card can be stolen and its corresponding PIN code can be guessed by an intruder. A smartcard can be borrowed by a friend of yours and you would have no clue as to who is really logging in using that smart card.
Any form of two-factor authentication not involving biometrics cannot be as reliable as a biometric system to identify the person.
Biometric identifying verification systems control people. If the person with the correct hand, eye, face, signature, or voice is not present, the identification and verification cannot take place and the desired action (i.e., portal passage, data, or resource access) does not occur.
As has been demonstrated many times, adversaries and criminals obtain and successfully use access cards, even those that require the addition of a PIN. This is because these systems control only pieces of plastic (and sometimes information), rather than people. Real asset and resource protection can only be accomplished by people, not cards and information, because unauthorized persons can (and do) obtain the cards and information.
Further, life-cycle costs are significantly reduced because no card or PIN administration system or personnel are required. The authorized person does not lose physical characteristics (i.e., hands, face, eyes, signature, or voice), but cards and PINs are continuously lost, stolen, or forgotten. This is why card access systems require systems and people to administer, control, record, and issue (new) cards and PINs. Moreover, the cards are an expensive and recurring cost.
NOTE FROM CLEMENT: This question has been generating lots of interest. The keyword in the question is: Individual (the person) and also the authenticated portion as well.
I totally agree with you that Two Factors or Strong Authentication would be the strongest means of authentication. However the question is not asking what is the strongest mean of authentication, it is asking what is the best way to identify the user (individual) behind the technology. When answering questions do not make assumptions to facts not presented in the question or answers.
Nothing can beat Biometrics in such case. You cannot lend your fingerprint and pin to someone else, you cannot borrow one of my eye balls to defeat the Iris or Retina scan. This is why it is the best method to authenticate the user.
I think the reference is playing with semantics and that makes it a bit confusing. I have improved the question to make it a lot clearer and I have also improve the explanations attached with the question.
The reference mentioned above refers to authenticating the identity for access. So the distinction is being made that there is identity and there is authentication. In the case of physical security the enrollment process is where the identity of the user would be validated and then the biometrics features provided by the user would authenticate the user on a one to one matching basis (for authentication) with the reference contained in the database of biometrics templates. In the case of system access, the user might have to provide a username, a pin, a passphrase, a smart card, and then provide his biometric attributes.
Biometric can also be used for Identification purpose where you do a one to many match. You take a facial scan of someone within an airport and you attempt to match it with a large database of known criminal and terrorists. This is how you could use biometric for Identification.
There are always THREE means of authentication, they are:
Something you know (Type 1) Something you have (Type 2) Something you are (Type 3)
Reference(s) used for this question: TIPTON, Harold F. & KRAUSE, Micki, Information Security Management Handbook, 4th edition (volume 1) , 2000, CRC Press, Chapter 1, Biometric Identification (page 7). and Search Security at http://searchsecurity.techtarget.com/definition/masquerade

When a biometric system is used for access control, the most important error is the false accept or false acceptance rate, or Type II error, where the system would accept an impostor.
A Type I error is known as the false reject or false rejection rate and is not as important in the security context as a type II error rate. A type one is when a valid company employee is rejected by the system and he cannot get access even thou it is a valid user.
The Crossover Error Rate (CER) is the point at which the false rejection rate equals the false acceptance rate if your would create a graph of Type I and Type II errors. The lower the CER the better the device would be.
The Combined Error Rate is a distracter and does not exist. Source: TIPTON, Harold F. & KRAUSE, Micki, Information Security Management Handbook, 4th edition (volume 1), 2000, CRC Press, Chapter 1, Biometric Identification (page 10).

Accuracy is the most critical characteristic of a biometric identifying verification system.
Accuracy is measured in terms of false rejection rate (FRR, or type I errors) and false acceptance rate (FAR or type II errors).
The Crossover Error Rate (CER) is the point at which the FRR equals the FAR and has become the most important measure of biometric system accuracy. Source: TIPTON, Harold F. & KRAUSE, Micki, Information Security Management Handbook, 4th edition (volume 1), 2000, CRC Press, Chapter 1, Biometric Identification (page 9).

It was David Bell and Leonard LaPadula who, in 1973, first described the DoD multilevel military security policy in abstract, formal terms. The Bell-LaPadula is a Mandatory Access Control (MAC) model concerned with confidentiality. Rivest, Shamir and Adleman (RSA) developed the RSA encryption algorithm. Whitfield Diffie and Martin Hellman published the Diffie-Hellman key agreement algorithm in 1976. David Clark and David Wilson developed the Clark-Wilson integrity model, more appropriate for security in commercial activities. Source: RUSSEL, Deborah & GANGEMI, G.T. Sr., Computer Security Basics, O’Reilly, July 1992 (pages 78,109).

Continuous authentication is a type of authentication that provides protection against impostors who can see, alter, and insert information passed between the claimant and verifier even after the claimant/verifier authentication is complete. These are typically referred to as active attacks, since they assume that the imposter can actively influence the connection between claimant and verifier. One way to provide this form of authentication is to apply a digital signature algorithm to every bit of data that is sent from the claimant to the verifier. There are other combinations of cryptography that can provide this form of authentication but current strategies rely on applying some type of cryptography to every bit of data sent. Otherwise, any unprotected bit would be suspect. Robust authentication relies on dynamic authentication data that changes with each authenticated session between a claimant and a verifier, but does not provide protection against active attacks. Encrypted authentication is a distracter. Source: GUTTMAN, Barbara & BAGWILL, Robert, NIST Special Publication 800-xx, Internet Security Policy: A Technical Guide, Draft Version, May 25, 2000 (page 34).

The last login message displays the last login date and time, allowing a user to discover if their account was used by someone else. Hence, this is rather a detective control. Source: RUSSEL, Deborah & GANGEMI, G.T. Sr., Computer Security Basics, O’Reilly, July 1992 (page 63).