- Email: [email protected]
ID contract awarded
NEWS / COMMENT fingerprint
25 million sensors sold for AuthenTec
A
uthenTec, a fingerprint sensor and solutions provider, has announced the shipment of its 25 millionth sensor – an industry record. AuthenTec has shipped over 15 million sensors in the past 16 months, compared to the prior 10 million sensors shipped since the company’s founding in 1998. AuthenTec’s fingerprint sensors, based on the company’s TruePrint technology, are being used in over 17 million PCs and more than 7 million cell phones worldwide. More than 220 models of PCs and mobile devices from the world’s foremost brands feature the company’s sensors. TruePrint technology reads below the surface of the skin to the live layer. This subsurface approach helps AuthenTec sensors to read almost all fingerprints regardless of the fingerprint’s apparent condition or the environment. According to AuthenTec Chairman & CEO Scott Moody: “The 25 millionth sensor shipment milestone is evidence of the rapid adoption of fingerprint sensors in millions of today’s enterprise and consumer electronic products.”
Contact: Brent Dietz at AuthenTec, Tel: +1 321 3081320, Email: [email protected]
voting
Bangladesh voter/ID contract awarded
F
ingerprint company BIO-key International and software company Tiger IT have been awarded an exclusive contract to provide a biometric-based credentialing solution for the Bangladesh voter registration project. This solution is being used to prepare voter rolls and issue national ID cards in preparation for Bangladesh’s general elections to be held in 2008. The initial implementation of the solution has successfully registered and issued national ID cards for nearly five million people and demonstrated the creation of local voter rolls for the election. The registration process, which is designed to 12
Biometric Technology Today
be convenient for citizens, incorporates a timesaving pre-registration step as well as scheduled appointment times to enrol each citizen’s biometric information including photograph, four fingerprints and signature. The biometric enrolment process takes about five to six minutes per person. Beyond establishing more accurate voter rolls to facilitate the upcoming election in 2008, the national ID card is used by each citizen to access up to 22 different services managed or offered by the government. The national ID card also includes a standard barcode encoded with ISO fingerprint templates and PKI digital hash that can be used to quickly verify the identity of the cardholder and the integrity and authenticity of the ID card. This next phase of the project was scheduled to begin in November and will register up to 100 million people, making it the largest biometric enrolment initiative in the world, the companies claim. This will involve more than 20 000 personnel, 500 ID management servers developed by Tiger IT, and over 8000 laptop computers equipped with Tiger IT enrolment software, BIO-key’s fingerprint ID software and FBI certified fingerprint readers. BIO-key’s
WEB-key development platform will be used in stages to detect duplicate registrations. The solution also uses facial recognition software from German supplier Cognitec Systems.
News Flash
L-1 to acquire Bioscrypt Just as BTT was going to press it was announced that the latest target for L-1 Identity Solutions is Bioscrypt, a provider of enterprise access control solutions based on fingerprint and 3D facial recognition. Under the terms of the agreement, L-1 will purchase Bioscrypt shares for C$0.55 per share, representing a total purchase price of approximately C$44.0 million. This move adds 3D face to L-1’s already extensive portfolio of biometric technologies. BTT will give in-depth coverage to this story in next month’s issue…
COMMENT As the biometrics industry moves into 2008 it is clear that, on the whole, large-scale identity-centred projects are dominating the scene. These days we would be incorrect to call most of these projects “biometric projects”, although they may use the technology as a critical part of their architecture. In many of today’s large-scale identity projects, biometrics are merely a small element within a system – systems whose objectives far exceed the delivery capabilities of the biometric industry. Technology selection, technical design, assessing business process change, working with legacy systems across multiple organisations, implementing new systems architecture, designing robust and secure databases, implementing the latest security policies, ensuring staff are trained etc. These are just some of the specialisms associated with large systems integrators, and of course it is many of these skills which are necessary for most large-scale government-based identity contracts. Looking at this month’s issue of BTT we can see in our survey that the UK’s e-Borders programme has awarded a £650 million contract to the Trusted Border consortium. Within
this consortium were a host of large companies such as Raytheon (Prime), Accenture, Detica, Serco, QinetiQ, Steria, Cap Gemini, as well as biometric firm Daon. The losing bidders were BT emblem, a team comprising BT, Lockheed Martin, LogicaCMG, Hewlett Packard, ARINC and Anite. Our lead story this month shows that Anite and LogicaCMG are separately in the running (along with Motorola) for another potentially large project with the DVLA. As an interesting aside, we note that Lockheed Martin is steadily building up its biometric offering. This month there is a cooperation announcement with facial recognition technology provider Cognitec, which follows hot on the heels of another co-operation agreement (announced in last month’s BTT) which saw the integrator team up with iris recognition company IriTech. A major systems integrator, Lockheed Martin seems to be focusing its efforts on integrating a range of biometrics technologies, allowing potential customers to incorporate multiple biometrics techniques – including fingerprint, facial and iris scanning – into their operations. This looks to be a very sensible move. Mark Lockie
January 2008
25 million sensors sold for AuthenTec
A
uthenTec, a fingerprint sensor and solutions provider, has announced the shipment of its 25 millionth sensor – an industry record. AuthenTec has shipped over 15 million sensors in the past 16 months, compared to the prior 10 million sensors shipped since the company’s founding in 1998. AuthenTec’s fingerprint sensors, based on the company’s TruePrint technology, are being used in over 17 million PCs and more than 7 million cell phones worldwide. More than 220 models of PCs and mobile devices from the world’s foremost brands feature the company’s sensors. TruePrint technology reads below the surface of the skin to the live layer. This subsurface approach helps AuthenTec sensors to read almost all fingerprints regardless of the fingerprint’s apparent condition or the environment. According to AuthenTec Chairman & CEO Scott Moody: “The 25 millionth sensor shipment milestone is evidence of the rapid adoption of fingerprint sensors in millions of today’s enterprise and consumer electronic products.”
Contact: Brent Dietz at AuthenTec, Tel: +1 321 3081320, Email: [email protected]
voting
Bangladesh voter/ID contract awarded
F
ingerprint company BIO-key International and software company Tiger IT have been awarded an exclusive contract to provide a biometric-based credentialing solution for the Bangladesh voter registration project. This solution is being used to prepare voter rolls and issue national ID cards in preparation for Bangladesh’s general elections to be held in 2008. The initial implementation of the solution has successfully registered and issued national ID cards for nearly five million people and demonstrated the creation of local voter rolls for the election. The registration process, which is designed to 12
Biometric Technology Today
be convenient for citizens, incorporates a timesaving pre-registration step as well as scheduled appointment times to enrol each citizen’s biometric information including photograph, four fingerprints and signature. The biometric enrolment process takes about five to six minutes per person. Beyond establishing more accurate voter rolls to facilitate the upcoming election in 2008, the national ID card is used by each citizen to access up to 22 different services managed or offered by the government. The national ID card also includes a standard barcode encoded with ISO fingerprint templates and PKI digital hash that can be used to quickly verify the identity of the cardholder and the integrity and authenticity of the ID card. This next phase of the project was scheduled to begin in November and will register up to 100 million people, making it the largest biometric enrolment initiative in the world, the companies claim. This will involve more than 20 000 personnel, 500 ID management servers developed by Tiger IT, and over 8000 laptop computers equipped with Tiger IT enrolment software, BIO-key’s fingerprint ID software and FBI certified fingerprint readers. BIO-key’s
WEB-key development platform will be used in stages to detect duplicate registrations. The solution also uses facial recognition software from German supplier Cognitec Systems.
News Flash
L-1 to acquire Bioscrypt Just as BTT was going to press it was announced that the latest target for L-1 Identity Solutions is Bioscrypt, a provider of enterprise access control solutions based on fingerprint and 3D facial recognition. Under the terms of the agreement, L-1 will purchase Bioscrypt shares for C$0.55 per share, representing a total purchase price of approximately C$44.0 million. This move adds 3D face to L-1’s already extensive portfolio of biometric technologies. BTT will give in-depth coverage to this story in next month’s issue…
COMMENT As the biometrics industry moves into 2008 it is clear that, on the whole, large-scale identity-centred projects are dominating the scene. These days we would be incorrect to call most of these projects “biometric projects”, although they may use the technology as a critical part of their architecture. In many of today’s large-scale identity projects, biometrics are merely a small element within a system – systems whose objectives far exceed the delivery capabilities of the biometric industry. Technology selection, technical design, assessing business process change, working with legacy systems across multiple organisations, implementing new systems architecture, designing robust and secure databases, implementing the latest security policies, ensuring staff are trained etc. These are just some of the specialisms associated with large systems integrators, and of course it is many of these skills which are necessary for most large-scale government-based identity contracts. Looking at this month’s issue of BTT we can see in our survey that the UK’s e-Borders programme has awarded a £650 million contract to the Trusted Border consortium. Within
this consortium were a host of large companies such as Raytheon (Prime), Accenture, Detica, Serco, QinetiQ, Steria, Cap Gemini, as well as biometric firm Daon. The losing bidders were BT emblem, a team comprising BT, Lockheed Martin, LogicaCMG, Hewlett Packard, ARINC and Anite. Our lead story this month shows that Anite and LogicaCMG are separately in the running (along with Motorola) for another potentially large project with the DVLA. As an interesting aside, we note that Lockheed Martin is steadily building up its biometric offering. This month there is a cooperation announcement with facial recognition technology provider Cognitec, which follows hot on the heels of another co-operation agreement (announced in last month’s BTT) which saw the integrator team up with iris recognition company IriTech. A major systems integrator, Lockheed Martin seems to be focusing its efforts on integrating a range of biometrics technologies, allowing potential customers to incorporate multiple biometrics techniques – including fingerprint, facial and iris scanning – into their operations. This looks to be a very sensible move. Mark Lockie
January 2008