Sep-02-10 Interview with John Carter, President , e-DATA Corp.

The other thing we often discuss are the various ways in which our readers are deployed. Aside from standard access control, some examples include hospitals or medical facilities that want to protect a drug cabinet; data centers that protect the server room; in banks it might be a safe; or whatever room or cabinet you’d want to secure anywhere. If you look at any given area, typically biometrics will be added to the equation because the perception is that it will be needed in a secure area. Well, that perspective immediately tells us something, which is, in reality, if you require real security somewhere, you’ll use biometrics.

Aug-25-10 Interview with Richard Ringold, IEEE Certified Biometrics Professional® (CBP) Program

The field of biometrics is growing rapidly, with a diverse and expanding workforce from a wide variety of backgrounds, industries and organizations. But until now there wasn’t a credible, standard way of identifying who really knew biometrics well. IEEE recognized the need for professional certification and standardized training in biometrics, and used its strong ties to academia, government, and industry, both in the U.S. and internationally to pull the program together. IEEE is fortunate to have among its members many of the leading biometrics experts, and was positioned well to coordinate and fund the multi-year development of the CBP program…

Aug-13-10 Interview with Keith Stringfellow, President, Smartmatic Corporation

Last May Smartmatic carried out the automation project for the General Elections in the Philippines, the largest electoral process that a private company has ever undertaken. More than 85,000 candidates contesting for 17,000 posts, 50.7 million voters, 82,200 voting machines, more than 315 million votes cast, transmitted, and counted, all across 7,107 islands comprising the archipelago. For the first time, Filipinos got to learn results within Election Day: one hour and a half after the polls closed, 40% of results had been transmitted and tallied. In past elections, for example in 2004, 40 days were spent counting votes manually in order to…

Jul-27-10 Interview with Mr. K. Souaid, Keystone Equity Partners

We view the biometrics sector as one of the most vibrant and promising parts of what we call ‘social technologies’. These are technologies that produce a set of applications with a highly practical and multi-facet usage. Biometrics deals with every day situations from security to credentialing for transactions. With an increase in the uptake of such technologies by civilian and non-civilian users, a high pent up demand for a variety of applications, and a growing world population (especially in emerging markets), biometrics is poised to become a ‘must have’ not a ‘smart to have’ option for governments & businesses alike…

Jul-21-10 Interview with Joe Rosenkrantz, CEO, Airborne Biometrics Group, Inc.

The FaceFirst system was built in a cloud-architecture so that it can be run either at a single site, or within a corporate or internet cloud. This way, it enables us to remotely host the main matching and encoding engines, and from there to, essentially, transform a high definition video stream down to just a series of the best representation of each face that passes by cameras. This means that we can provide wide-area networking capabilities, something that previously was not possible using high definition video because of the high amount of bandwidth required per camera. The second module is the mobile face recognition capability. We’ve engineered the software to run on most of the commodity mobile phone platforms that…

Jul-06-10 findBIOMETRICS' Interview with Harry Helmich and Jamie Brooker, Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC)

I think that one thing that we can say from a UK perspective is that each of the sort of, silos—academia, industry and government— have pretty much been operating just like that. Academia came up with a solution, industry tried to grasp it and set it into government. There has been no continuity but rather there has been sort of a culture of adoption, if you like. And so, if anything, this is the first time where academia, industry and government are, basically, at the ground level, and they will be able to share ideas from their own perspectives all within the same forum. So, I think it is quite interesting from that perspective because these kinds of activities have always been just in industry, or just in academia, or just the public sector. With this challenge, everyone is…

May-20-10 findBIOMETRICS' Interview with Jose Luque, President/CEO and Founder of Merkatum Corporation

Merkatum has productized the benefits of multi-biometric and biographic resolution technologies while substantially decreasing the complexities, risks, and costs associated of deploying these types of systems. We have “pre-packaged” emfiva F/FRS as an appliance, with built-in business processes and best practices for vertical sectors such as public safety and justice, civil identification, and healthcare. The “emfiva box” is shipped to the end-user with a pre-determined configuration. On its back-end, emfiva F/FRS processes different biometric (fingerprint, facial, iris, signature) and biographic (name recognition, phonetic, key edit distance, fuzzy match) recognition algorithms to determine identity relationships in…

May-07-10 Interview with Mr. Tomaz Bergant, President & CEO, TAB Systems Inc.

AT IFSEC in the UK this year we are planning the official worldwide launch of a new rugged high security unit called smarti® Guardeon. The new unit combines our core biometric access control with a built in proximity card reader and a myriad of other features that will make it an easy choice for user across a wide range of categories. The Guardeon has also been named one of the six finalists in the Best New Access Control Category at IFSEC…

Apr-09-10 Interview with Neil Norman, CEO of Human Recognition Systems

We have developed MSolutions that specifically target the construction and aviation sectors but we also work within national security with central government, defence, homeland and border security sectors.  Our growth within the public sector has enabled us to develop specific biometric platforms that can rapidly speed up development time on bespoke projects. Most recently we have developed a mobile biometric platform for the defence and homeland security sectors.

Mar-17-10 Interview with Dave Russell, System Manager of NOVARIS

The responsibilities over the last 15 years have grown exponentially. I take care of the computer system at NOVARIS, which is a data search and storage system for the Northern Virginia law enforcement agencies. Over the last 10 years, it has evolved into a method that the sheriff’s departments in all the jurisdictions of Northern Virginia use as a booking process. We use LiveScans to record the fingerprint and demographic data, and include mugshots with the record that can be used with facial recognition software. We provide fingerprint examiners, in every jurisdiction, the ability to work from their agency home-sites, on fingerprint workstations, and take advantage of…

Feb-22-10 Interview with Pill-Kyung Kang, CEO of IDTECK

With diversified know-how that comes from 20 years of experience in the security industry, IDTECK focuses on manufacturing products in the areas of access control and time & attendance systems based on the innovative technologies of RFID, biometrics and embedded OS. From its establishment in 1989 to this date, IDTECK has been devoted to designing and developing diversified technology and has become a manufacturing leader of security products for businesses, homes, factories and other variety of applications. IDTECK continues its product development and marketing & sales efforts to become the “one-stop solution” for security needs. We currently hold ten international patents on…

Feb-12-10 Interview with Claude Galipeault, Chief Business Development Officer, Digitus Biometrics Inc

We’re a manufacturer of, primarily, biometric access control products and we have three variations of these products. One is the stand-alone product, which is really geared towards protecting a single door. Another product is one which will integrate with existing access control systems with an industry standard Wiegand output. We also sell a network version of our product, which managed by our central management software in a network configuration. The product is IP based, so there is no physical restriction to the scope of a single system. And in network configuration, all the user enrolments and management of the units and capture of data are done by our central management software. We also have a time and attendance solution, and…

Feb-01-10 Interview with Dr. Myra S. Gray, Director & Executive Manager, DoD Biometrics

The BTF’s role is to enable the DoD with biometric capabilities, and that can mean many things.  We work in those areas of the DoD that, when enabled with biometrics, are made better.  For example, it could be in an area such as base access or in the medical community, where the need to identify someone is required.  My role, along with the BTF’s role, is to provide that enabling capability throughout the different mission-threads in the DoD, as well as to be a partner with the other agencies and departments of the U.S. government and our international partners in providing that capability…

Jan-18-10 findBIOMETRICS YEAR in REVIEW 2009

Dec-15-09 Interview with Charles Koo, President & CEO and Mohammed Murad, VP Global Business Development & Sales, IRIS ID Systems

As you know LG Iris has been a leading provider of iris recognition technology since 1997, we have done a lot of strategic analysis about where to take the business. After much deliberation it made sense to create a separate entity that focuses on developing identity authentication technology solutions to fit the market requirements. Iris ID System Inc. is a separate business and we have taken on all the rights and obligations from LG Iris.

Dec-10-09 Interview with Rob Durward, Director, IM/IT at the Canadian Air Transport Security Authority (CATSA)

CATSA, which stands for Canadian Air Transport Security Authority, is the answer, basically, to 9/11 in 2001, but from the Canadian perspective. We were created in April of 2002, and essentially, our responsibly concerns passenger safety at airports. Our main responsibility is the screening of passengers and their goods. We have both PBS & HBS, meaning, Pre-board screening and Hold-bag screening, at Canadian airports. Our third one- as we have four-, is NPS, which means Non-passenger screening, and RAIC, which is Restricted Area Identity Card. The non-passenger screening involves the screening of individuals who are in the restricted area at each of the airports. I guess the RAIC is what…

Nov-23-09 Interview with Alan L. Hanson, Fairfax County Police Dept., Director of NOVARIS

Well, we are looking at multi-model devices that would include fingerprint, face recognition and iris identification systems. We look at high profile scenarios, whether it be situations such as inaugurations, or other large scale events where, having the ability to identify individuals who may be terrorists or violent criminals among thousands of people entering a restricted area would be invaluable. Using iris and facial recognition biometric identifications systems, you’re not inconveniencing the masses, but yet at the same time, you’re still gaining valuable information about certain people that may be a threat to others attending these events.

Nov-09-09 Interview with Dae-hoon Kim, Ph.D., CEO/President, IriTech Inc.

IriTech’s industry-leading national test performance with NIST is indicative of our year overall. 2009 has been a year of many new customers, deliveries against a growing number of contracts, and a broadening of avenues through which we can deliver value and grow business. It has also been a year of important new product releases, software and hardware. Our new IriMaster™ software suite contains the best performing algorithms available today in an easy-to-use package to support large-scale iris identification solutions. With IriMaster™, solution providers can rapidly respond and meet the needs of the most demanding iris identification applications. The new IriCAMM line of cameras set a ….

Oct-09-09 Interview with Bowin Qiu, CEO, Synochip Corporation

PS1802 is a high performance DSP for the embedded fingerprint recognition field. It features 120MHz, 480MIPS; 156KB on-chip SRAM and power consumption less than 150mW @ 120MHz. The embedded image processing accelerator and powerful SoC greatly reduce the second-developing period and helps users to promote their personalized products to market within the shortest time. We have shipped around 10 million PS1802 pieces around the world. The AS series uses the innovative "Cordis 5 +" 32 bit RISC processor core, which features ….

Sep-21-09 Interview with Roger van Diepen, CEO of Touchless Biometric Systems

The development of this world-novelty of our Touchless Ten Printer was enabled when we were endowed with a grant from the U.S. Department of Justice. This Touchless Ten-Printer has been developed in order to be able to capture all ten rolled-equivalent fingerprints, in a touchless way, and in less than 60 seconds. This product is specifically designed for civil and criminal identification purposes. Of course, this is a big step forward from the current methodology where those rolled fingers have to be captured individually by rolling them one-by-one on a platen. The TBS BioGuard Ten,— or, the TBS Ten-printer, as we are referring to it,— is capable of capturing the fingerprint touchlessly in a 4-by-4-by-2 dimension within 60 seconds.