FB
Tom, you just recently joined Daon - is that correct?

TG
I joined Daon on the 1st of February this year as their CEO. I spent my career prior to that in the Information Technology Industry focusing, most recently with a large system integrator in Washington DC, working on mission critical projects in the US and around the world. I was searching for best of breed products in the security technology field and came across Daon. Daon then approached me and asked me to join the company as their CEO and a member of their board of directors.

FB
Just as a backgrounder for our readers who might not be all that familiar with the company, could you just give us a brief background of Daon?

TG
Sure, I would be happy to. Daon has been in business since 2000 and it was very strategically targeted as a company. Since its inception Daon had a very deliberate strategy, through work done with McKinsey & Company, which was really more business strategy work, to look at this market and assess biometrics as a technology. We looked at the needs and requirements that biometric solutions would have to bring forward in the area of performance, security, privacy, flexibility. An immense amount of effort was directed to building a set of products and skills that would be, by either brilliant timing or some fortunate luck, exactly what the countries around the world and businesses require right now. So it is really a company that has been always targeted on identity management solutions using a strong authentication technique such as biometrics.

FB
Recently IBG (International Biometric Group) testing of DaonEngine received absolutely top marks. Can you tell us some of the advantages and benefits of the DaonEngine?

TG
The DaonEngine is an identity management software platform designed to support multi-modal biometrics including finger, face and iris and multi-factoral authentication mechanisms such as smartcards, RFIDs, tokens etc. DaonEngine is an open platform, which supports Java, C and .Net, it can seamlessly integrate multiple devices and algorithms as well as connect to multiple applications and IT systems through what we call our Connector Development Framework. This is a system, which has been designed to be very flexible in supporting different technologies that are either in the market today or ones that will evolve in the upcoming years. So it is a system that really tries to provide enhanced security, increased speed when processing individuals enrolled in a system and enhanced user convenience to our customers.

Then with that, some of the very important design principles that were put in place when the product was architected were really the things such as flexibility, which I touched on and that's that open architecture framework so we can use any combination of biometrics or credentials, and then to have a system, we term it as a very robust system, so it is always available. If you have multiple 747's land at an airport, you have no worry about our system not being available, or if it is applied as a border crossing system you obviously can't shut down the borders of a country so it must always be there.

From a security perspective the importance of having a highly advanced secure capability to protect any information that is stored in it, biometric or biographical information, we view as an essential capability.

Finally, the ability to scale. If you look at a system, many of these projects start off as a pilot and they are typically an evaluation of base type technology devices, fingerprint, iris, and facial scanning technologies or algorithms. Then they are successful and start rolling out, potentially to a national level scheme. If you think of The Transportation Security Administration (TSA) Registered Traveler Program, it may start off with thousands of participants but the volume of travellers in the United States exceeds six hundred million passengers a year. You certainly want to protect your initial investment rather than disposing of it, so the ability to scale and to be able to demonstrate to the customer that you can start off as a pilot and continue to be confident that the system will perform at the highest levels required by any nation or any organization in the world. That is a really important attribute of what we have been able to prove with the DaonEngine and through independent organizations such as International Biometric Group (IBG).

FB
You also have a number of other solutions in the physical access and logical access areas, DaonEnter and DaonLogon; can you spend a minute and fill us in on those products?

TG
Sure! The products are designed for customers that want to have a single sign-on so an individual can, through an authentication technique like a biometric, sign on to multiple business systems as opposed to remembering a multitude of passwords. Our products also allow the physical access and protect critical infrastructures, such as buildings and facilities, which is an important requirement that is growing both in the government and the commercial sector.

FB
You just released an announcement about your involvement on the Unisys team in securing the Registered Traveler Program, which you just mentioned earlier, in the United States. Would you please tell us about that?

TG
I would be delighted to! Registered Traveler is a project that is within the Transportation Security Administration and the purpose of the program is to facilitate and expedite the movement of pre-registered travelers in airports without compromising security or any security screening processes. The program starts at the Minneapolis Airport working with Northwest Airlines.

There are a total of three airports that we are working on and they are three of the largest fifteen in the world in terms of passenger processing. What we are providing is core biometric software to help manage and expedite passenger processing. An individual frequent flyer would enrol in the system, a process that takes about five minutes, once enrolled they would volunteer to have a background check occur on them. After they are officially enrolled in the system and have passed background checking they are allowed to pass through a special security screening lane in the airport through which they verify their identity using their biometrics. This allows TSA to focus its resources on the unknown threats or potentially higher risk passengers and allows the Registered Travelers to pass more swiftly through the security lines, avoiding random secondary checks. In the words of the TSA, "TSA is on the cutting-edge of new security technology. We expect this program to provide frequent travelers with a high level of security and an expedited screening experience."

FB
Who else is involved in this project with you?

TG
The other companies involved - Unisys is a prime contractor and we are a sub-contractor to Unisys with our specific role being the core biometric and biographic software. There is a company called SITA Inc. which built the kiosks - then there is Boeing which is carrying out the enrolment and help-desk activities, and then ADT which is doing the installation work. Those are the key contractors.

FB
Where are you seeing the greatest growth for the company, Tom? Are you concentrating on certain vertical markets that you favour perhaps?

TG
Yes, we are focussed on three markets. We are focussed on government, financial and life sciences. The leading vertical market is clearly government and the activity with government isn't restricted to any region of the world or any specific countries, but equally paced progress in all regions of the world, whether it be in the United States, North America, European Union countries, the Middle East and Asia. We are seeing countries, regardless of culture or levels of technology adoption, all moving forward with this technology.

FB
It is interesting your comments about the international focus of your company having opportunities to work around the world and seeing where biometrics is moving more quickly. Are you seeing that about equal in North America and Europe then?

TG
Exactly! It is really I think an interesting point also; the adoption of these technologies is widespread and transcends any borders or regions of the world. In the European Union, there is the Schengen procurement for the EU borders, in the UK there is the e-borders program.

FB
And you are partnered with a number of companies from IBM, that you mentioned earlier, to Unisys, to recently Cognitec out of Germany. Can you just fill us in as to how that works?

TG
We really work with two different groups of companies. We work with system integrators around the world and as they search for best-of-breed products. In the case of Unisys they searched for the best products in this area that would give them a competitive advantage to win. We are obviously proud to be selected by them. We don't make devices nor do we make algorithms. So what we will do is we spend extensive research looking at who are the best performing device manufacturers - a device that can capture a finger, an iris or facial scan, and then the different algorithm companies - whether it be a Cogent or a Sagem, or others. Daon tools and products provide flexibility to use any of those vendors products. We look for the best ones out there and one of the advantages we bring to the systems integrators is the flexibility to choose and use any of them. This is also important because at times a customer such as the United States Department of Homeland Security, may have an existing infrastructure in place with different vendors products and they want, for cost effective reasons, to take advantage of that.

FB
Fiona or Tom, is there anything else you would like to cover off before we summarize?

TG - Fiona
I would just like to go back to your point about the physical and logical access systems and some of the work that we are doing in the financial services sector and those related to the life sciences, because the physical and logical access control products are the products of choice in the enterprise business. In the public sector we work with the primes and systems integrators and the proposition is very different and generally they are building mission critical solutions, these massive systems for government.

But we are seeing the financial sector and the Pharma sector looking for physical and logical access control, and I think you would resonate with that Peter, with other companies you speak to.

We have just recently deployed an integrated physical and logical access system into an insurance company in New York. We haven't disclosed this to the media yet because we are rolling it out to two more sites. It is already fully deployed for all the employees in Manhattan and they want to roll it out to other sites they have in North America and the neat thing about it is in a one-time enrolment, as an insurance employee of that company, they can get through the doorways now with their finger biometrics and we integrated it into their card system too so they get to keep their employee ID cards with their photo IDs and can also log into their desktops in the morning. So they have seen huge efficiencies in terms of managing employees - such as the password management costs they were having in the past to help with employee calls to reset passwords etc. The main thing about that deployment was that we were able to leverage the same DaonEngine to capture and encrypt and store the biometric templates to allow all the employees, through the policy management tools that we have, to get through into the building in a secure way and get to their desktops. I don't know if we have seen any other companies do that. So that has been a great experience for Daon. The fact that this client wants to roll it out to two more sites is testament to its success and we are very pleased with that.

TG
Peter, one last comment on the registered traveller example, that has not yet been done and so in Minneapolis this was the first deployment and introduction of this so there was a lot of historical data to look at as to how well it would be received or how the system would be accepted by the registered traveller. The enrolments have exceeded any expectations and it has just been overwhelmingly well received by the travelling public. You may have seen some of the quotes and articles but they have been extremely positive and the key stakeholders in the project including the TSA, the airlines and the airports have also been extremely pleased to date. There are already some very important metrics coming out of this project since the first traveler in the nation passed through the Registered Traveler lane in Minneapolis St. Paul airport on Wednesday, July 7th.

FB
Good news for the entire industry, Tom, I think.

TG
Yes - as a traveller I am looking forward to enrolling myself!

FB
Well thank you very much for taking the time to speak with us today!

Read more about Daon: www.daon.com

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