Jan-19-12 findBIOMETRICS Year in Review 2011

Thanks to all our respondents this year. We received responses from Canada, Spain, Russia, China, Ireland, Brazil, Hong Kong, Sweden, Germany, UK, Israel, France, Korea, The Netherlands, Lithuania, Singapore, Japan, Italy, Malaysia and the USA.

Iris ID Systems Inc., 3M-Cogent , MorphoTrak, Lumidigm, IBIA, Cross Match Technologies, Aware, AOptix, BIO-key, IrisGuard, Lockheed Martin, Accenture, Anviz, CSC, SmartMatic, ZK Software, CGI, Greenbit, Warwick Warp, NEC, Daon, IEEE, Digital Persona, Airborne Biometrics Group, Avalon, Smart Sensors, Fingerprint Cards, Fujitsu Frontech North America, Cognitec, Acuity, SecurLinx, Speech Technology Center, Suprema, HSB, Human Recognition Systems, Authentec, Accu-Time Systems, Wasp Barcode Technologies, IdentiMetrics, Fulcrum, Griaule, Iritech, Sarnoff, Neurotechnology, Corvus, M2SYS, SOFTPRO, SIC, and Authenware.   

Jan-11-12 Interview with Christian Rutigliano, International Sales Manager, Green Bit S.p.A.

The mobile ID market, outside the Law Enforcement segment, is growing and we have seen evidence of this at the most recent trade shows and conferences. Where the mobile ID market will be heading in the short and medium term is rather difficult to predict but there are some huge projects regarding mobile ID applications in the government and non-government sector; just to name one I’m thinking of the financial inclusion project in India which is a spin-off project of UID. Which biometric technology will be used in mobile environments is still hard to say since this will depend on application requirements and budgets but for now I would say finger and iris are the most robust technologies and if used in a multi-modal biometric approach they are most suitable for large scale projects likely to be seen in healthcare and finance.  

Nov-07-11 Interview with Li Wang, CEO, Warwick Warp Ltd.

We have, at the moment, four main products. LiveScan SDK, which deals with small to medium scale lifescan deployments, and matching and template creation. The second product is Warwick AFIS SDK, which is designed to deal with large scale applications, one in which the number of users exceeds several hundred thousand. The third product is Warwick Warp latent AFIS, which is specifically designed to deal with a law enforcement application, and it has the capability to match, with or without human intervention, the print to mark, mark to print, or mark to mark comparisons. The last product is the one we have just released, which is called Synthesis Simplicity, and is a tool designed to test biometric systems. When we talked to systems integrators and end-users, we found that in order for them to test, or evaluate, the performance of their systems, a large number of biometric or fingerprint data, would be required. This is because of the nature and sensitivity of…

Oct-14-11 Interview with Antonio Mugica, CEO, Smartmatic

Smartmatic has a vast and proven experience worldwide in the automated elections and the identity management industries. We are currently working at improving our value proposition in order to exceed, as always, the expectations of our clients. However, we have also been working in other verticals such as public safety, emergency control platforms and intelligent transportation systems that we have decided to repackage under the name of Smart Cities solutions. In this market, Smartmatic was recently selected as provider and contractor for the implementation of the fare collection system, management and operation control of the integrated mass transportation system in Cartagena of the Indies (Colombia), for the next 18 years. With this new BRT, both residents and visitors will benefit from an automated solution toward a modern, efficient and safer public transportation. As technology developers, in Smartmatic, we are constantly analyzing opportunities where…

Sep-26-11 Interview with Mike DePasquale, CEO, BIO-key International

What is most exciting about the recent history of S.I.C. Biometrics is that they’re the first company to develop a fingerprint attachment device for the iPhone and the iPad. As you know, the i-series of devices are the most popular and certainly the best selling mobile devices in the market; I believe that Apple sold in the range of 28 million iPhones in the last quarter and approximately 4 million iPads. Therefore, all combined that is 32 million devices in the last quarter. Apple's mobile devices have been widely adopted by the consumer and more importantly for BIO-key, right now, the enterprise. One of the biggest issues surrounding enterprise adoption and the Apple platform is security. At present, with Bio-key's software and the S.I.C. Biometrics attachment, we can offer a full and complete solution for fingerprint access that is PIV (Personal Identity Verification) certified for any government agency as well as, full and complete support for enterprise access and to enterprise applications in the cloud.

Aug-15-11 Interview with Phil Scarfo, Senior Vice President of Worldwide Sales and Marketing, Lumidigm Inc.

What makes Mariner special is that it leverages Windows to extend the Lumidigm Advantage, which we’ve offered for a few years now, to new markets. Until now, we’ve played well in markets where components are so important that organizations are prepared to pay a premium for products. Mariner allows us to bring reliability and durability to markets in which cost is also a factor. So, the big message is that we’re extending the Lumidigm Advantage to more markets, more applications, more customers and more use cases with Mariner.

Jul-12-11 Interview with John Che, CEO ZK Software Inc.

 ZK Software is a leading global developer of innovative advanced biometric and RFID reader solutions used in access control and time & attendance applications. One of the largest providers in the world, ZK Software has sold over five million units and serves customers in over 180 countries. We have been awarded 80 patents and earned a reputation for technical innovation, quality, speed-to-market and reliability. We have 1,500 employees solely dedicated to the customized design and delivery of biometric and RFID readers…

Apr-26-11 Cross Match Technologies - David Buckley, President and CEO and Bill Dumont, Senior Vice President, Worldwide Sales and Marketing - Interview

We agree with you completely on that point, as we are introducing more mobile solutions. In the past, we offered jump kits, which consisted of a computer, an iris-scan device, a ten-print unit, signature pads, and in most cases a camera for fingerprint, facial image and iris capture. We have continued to shrink those jump kits down in size and weight, and recently introduced a SEEK unit that incorporates all of those features. It has a built-in camera, complete iris collection in both ambient and direct sunlight, and captures fingerprint images. Customers were requesting units that work in bright sunlight and places with reflective light, since users can’t always bring people inside to collect biometric information, especially in war zones. Users must be able to get information as quickly as possible and communicate that data. This meant that there was the requirement to have an onboard watch-list and communications capabilities to…

Apr-05-11 Iris ID Systems - Mohammed Murad, Vice President Global Business Development and Sales - Interview

The new units are plug-compatible replacements for the widely used iCAM 4000 and offer significantly more features, applications, and integration flexibility than previous models. Based on our field-proven IrisAccess® systems, the world’s most advanced and deployed iris recognition platform, the new cameras are designed to meet the diverse needs for speed, accuracy, and value in today’s demanding biometric identification environment and continue to set the industry standard for iris recognition technology. Again, this particular product that we are announcing is actually a series of products, it’s a whole line up of devices. Therefore, we will be unveiling one or two versions of the product at ISC and there is a lot more to come, in that it will address multiple vertical markets…

Mar-04-11 3M Vice President and General Manager, Security System Division Michael P. Delkoski - Interview

Another important industry trend we’re seeing is that emerging economies are prepared to move to biometric infrastructures faster than many would have expected. We are currently seeing this with the UID program in India. The country is going through various processes in which it is attempting to enroll its entire citizen population, and is utilizing biometrics to help ensure accurate delivery of payments from the government to individuals in the country. A pilot program is currently underway, in which Cogent is participating to provide some of the hardware. Other countries, including Panama, Columbia, Ecuador, Venezuela and Romania, have moved…

Feb-08-11 Interview with Chuck Buffum, Vice President of Authentication Solutions, Nuance Communications

At present, one of our financial services customers is engaging in a pilot; and that pilot deals with internet banking for high value transactions, people making wire-transfers, or setting new payees on bill pay – those are risky transactions for the bank, so they are currently piloting the notion of, where someone sets up a new payee or does a high value funds transfer, this would trigger an automated phone call back to their registered mobile phone and then voice printing the caller to get a voice signature on that internet transaction.

Jan-18-11 findBIOMETRICS Year in Review 2010

The response to this year’s YIR was outstanding with 63 companies/industry experts responding to our questionnaire. We received responses from Canada, India, Slovenia, Spain, Russia, Australia, China, Ireland, Brazil, Hong Kong, Sweden, Mexico, Germany, UK, Israel, France, Korea, The Netherlands, Lithuania, Singapore, Japan, Italy, Malaysia and the USA.

Question 2 - What are the most pressing issues facing the Biometric Industry as we move into 2011?

Question 3 - Was 2010 a good year for your company? What were some of the highlights? What will 2011 hold for your company/organization/department? 

Nov-18-10 Interview with Shiraz Kapadia, COO, L-1 Enterprise Access Solutions

“4G” represents the fourth generation of our biometric access control products..our goal, rather than simply developing another product, was create an architecture that was flexible to adapt and integrate to various access control applications.

Nov-10-10 Interview with Christian Rutigliano, International Marketing Manager, Green Bit S.p.A.

The second device addresses a constantly growing market – Mobile ID. The “Miscan™” has been ergonomically designed for one-handed operations, and we have included many features and a great deal of functionality. The MiScan™ is FBI certified at SAP30 and thanks to its scalable and modular architecture it can be easily customized to fit our customer’s needs. The cornerstone of the MiScan™ is without a doubt the 1” x 1” FBI-PIV and BSI certified fingerprint reader which makes the MiScan™ one-of-a-kind in terms of fingerprint image quality.
Along with the fingerprint scanner, we have a 3 Megapixel camera that is capable of obtaining mugshots or MRZs and barcodes, which could be used for document readings, especially in passport schemes. This devise comes with many communication possibilities, ranging …

Oct-28-10 Interview with Cyrille Bataller, Director - Accenture Technology Labs Europe

From that, we then moved away from the registered traveller and shifted to automated border clearance. This enabled us to, rather than registering travellers one-by-one, rely on the biometrics embedded within the travel documents, whether they be passports or visa. We moved towards that option since we determined that it provided a higher impact.  Since the first pilot, we've conducted another one at another one of London's airports, this time at Stansted, where we've deployed six automated border clearance gates for a year. We've processed over half a million European travellers who carried an e-passport - without any pre-enrolment required, they just went through the border in self-service. More recently, we've deployed that solution, in production, also in Heathrow, which is the world's busiest international airport.
 

Sep-29-10 Interview with Bojan Cukic, Co-director, The Center for Identification Technology Research

I believe that the future of biometrics will be following the future of computation, as we know it today. Currently, computing platforms are pretty much everywhere; cameras are almost in every device these days, we have wearable devices. It’s my view that biometrics represents the natural progression, or choice, if you will, for human authentication.  Devices will be authenticating ourselves, we will be authenticating any devices which we’ll be using and many of those authentication tasks will be performed by way of biometrics.  We must be cognizant of privacy issues and possible violations caused by the naive use of biometrics. We must ensure what we share on the network are ”meaningless” binary representations; impossible to convert back into the feature sets which represent individuals. I believe that biometrics is going to be pervasive we won’t even recognize it as something special or out of the ordinary.
 

Sep-15-10 Interview with Phil Tusa, Vice President, Biometrics Programs, AOptix Technologies Inc.

Throughput relates directly to practical speed, a realizable speed. As a result, we have worked very hard to develop our typical time of capture down to two (2) seconds or better, if possible. At the same time, we’re also striving to minimize FTA rates, since a failure to acquire in a capture sequence drives a retry, also adversely impacts effective throughput. Since our FTA rates are extraordinarily low, our effective throughput will be superior.  As to the issue of accuracy, we have set extremely high standards for ourselves in terms of the quality of the images that we collect. Along with these image standards, we also perform a real-time onboard image quality metric so that should a subject be squinting, or looking off to the side, we are able to detect….

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…