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Visa reaches one billion and joins biometric study
News eTrue.com sees diverse markets for its service including areas, such as corporate banking and accounting, online financial transactions, secure intranet or extranet access, online stock trading, online access to prescriptions and medical records, distance learning, governmental online security and customer identification. Contact: Michael Kuperstein at eTrue.com, Tel: +1 781 235 0330, email: [email protected]
Law & order/face recognition
Mexican ballot box fraud tackled with biometrics The Mexican Government (Btt May ’00, p3) is to use facial recognition technology to help eliminate duplicate voter registrations for its July presidential election. The election between opposition candidate Vicente Fox Quesada and Francisco Labastida Ochoa, the incumbent party’s candidate, is expected to be extremely tight, making the need for a fraud-free vote even more crucial. Mexico’s Federal Election Institute (IFE) has been awarded a multi-million dollar budget to ensure “fair play”. As part of its efforts it has enlisted the services of Mexico Citybased software integrator MetaData, which will use FaceIt face recognition technology from US supplier Visionics (Btt May ’00, p6), along with its ObjectStore database management system. According to president and CEO of Visionics Joseph Atick: “This is the first time that a national government has used facial recognition technology for the sole purpose of eliminating duplicate voter registrations.” In Mexico, voters must first be issued with a voter registration card before taking it to a ballot box to make their vote. It is at this stage the facial recognition system will be used, as there is the possibility that voters could apply for more than one registration card using false identities. The new system will store a photo of the potential voter in a central IFE database and compare it against the images already stored. According to Visionics, its system can search at a speed of one million records per second, allowing a realtime search process. Contact: Frances Zelazny at Visionics, Tel: +1 201 332 9213, email: [email protected]
4 • Btt June 2000
Physical access control/vein recognition
Asian Telecom group makes large vein recognition order Fiber optic-based communication service provider Hanaro Telecom has taken delivery of 83 vein recognition units at one of its ISP Centres in Korea. The system was delivered by Korean-based supplier BK Systems (Btt Jul/Aug ’99, p9) and represents the company’s biggest vein recognition system order to date. BK Systems told Btt, that all 83 units are networked using BK System’s time and attendance software, Vein Control 2000, which allows all of the units to share the database in realtime. Hanaro Telecom has 70 internet network servers that are available for rent. These are each positioned in their own cage. Following the installation, each of these cages now has one BK 300S unit attached, so access can only be gained by authorised users. The other 13 vein identification units are used by Hanaro’s office employees at the centre. The system’s software has most of the regular time and attendance software functions, such as monitoring clock in/clock out times of users, warning signals for malfunctioning units and variable area and time control. One interesting feature is that the system is connected to the company’s CCTV cameras, which move to capture images of the area that is in use. BK Systems has recently joined forces with Nextern, also based in Korea, which will handle the company’s sales and marketing of the vein recognition systems. Contact: Daniel Choi at BK Systems, Tel: +82 2 3467 5413, Fax: +82 2 3461 6125, email: [email protected]
Financial
Visa reaches one billion and joins biometric study Visa International (Btt May ‘00, p2) has reached the one billion card milestone and given its thoughts on the likely look of its second billion cards.
Visionics launches Pocket PC product Visionics is hoping to capitalise on the proliferation of handheld devices incorporating built-in cameras with the latest version of its face recognition software. FaceIT for Pocket PC is now compatible with the new Microsoft CE operating system, Pocket PC, which is used in a variety of devices, such as Casio’s Cassiopeia, Hewlett Packard’s Jornada and Microsoft’s MiPad. Contact: Frances Zelazny at Visionics, Tel: +1 201 332 9213, email: [email protected]
News According to the president and CEO of Visa Malcom Williamson: “Our goal is to leverage technologies like the internet, chip, wireless and biometrics to provide new choices to our member institutions and their customers, including the option of moving to cardless payments. Of biometrics, Visa stated: “Visa is pursuing the viability of biometric technology, such as fingerprint and voice verification, which will provide Visa member institutions with increased options for cardless authentication to facilitate e-commerce and to deal with emerging information security and privacy issues.” As part of this strategy, Visa told Btt last month it was going to invite some of its member banks to take part in biometric technology trials of their own. In conjunction with this, Visa has just announced it will take part in a six-month comparative trial of fingerprint scanning, facial scanning and electronic signature verification. Being run by New York-based consultants IBG (International Biometric Group) (Btt September ’99, p4) from July, the independent study will also involve the Financial Services Technology Consortium (Btt June ’99, p6). Contact: Chetan Patwardhan at Visa, Tel: +1 650 432 3923, Fax: +1 650 432 7436
Smart cards
Smartcard chips ready for fingerprint matching
Visa’s vital statistics As well as reaching one billion cards worldwide, Visa also reports a number of other impressive statistics. Payment volume in 1999 reached US$1.6 trillion, a 19% growth on the previous year. This involved the processing of over 21.3 billion transactions. Visa now claims to account for approximately 8% of worldwide consumer spending and 50% of all payment transactions over the internet. Contact: Kristina Scott at Visa International, Tel: +1 650 432 3645, email: [email protected]
Industry interest in the storing and matching of templates on smart cards is hotting up as various industry suppliers announced their latest technical achievements at CardTech/SecurTech in Miami last month. Precise Biometrics (Btt May ’00, p6), Miotec and iD2 Technologies (Btt April ’00, p7), all based in Sweden, demonstrated a biometrically signed transaction, where fingerprint matching took place within a smart card chip. The solution could be used to secure emails or ordinary office documents. For this demonstration Precise Biometrics supplied its fingerprint matching software and integrated smartcard and fingerprint reader, while Miotech integrated the matching functionality onto its smart card. iD2 Technologies’ PKI-based software provided encryption and digital signature creation.
In a separate announcement, another supplier active in this area, Veridicom (Btt May ’00, p8), said that it has made an agreement with German smart card manufacturer Giesecke & Devrient (Btt Jul/Aug ’99, p4) to create smart cards with “Matchon-Card” cababilities, similar in concept to Precise Biometrics’ technology. The ability to match the template on a smart card was also announced at the end of last year by French smart card manufacturer Oberthur Card Systems along with id3 Semiconductors (Btt Dec ‘99/Jan ‘00, p2). Swedish supplier Fingerprint Cards (Btt May ’00, p8) also has technology capable of local matching on a smart card chip, according to the company’s president Lennart Carlson. Contact: Peter Höjerback at Precise Biometrics, Tel: +46 46 31 11 10, email: ph@precise biometrics.com
Dynamic signature verification
Smart pen gets makeover Dutch group LCI Technology (Btt April ‘00, p9) has launched a new version of its SMARTpen with a more futuristic design, that apparently appeals more to the younger generation than its earlier version. The technology behind the restyled pen has also been improved. According to LCI, its enhanced BiAS software creates smaller signature templates and processes information ten times faster than the older design. Essentially the pen is a regular ball point that uses sensors to pick up the biometric characteristics inherent in the way a person writes. The pen can now support X509 certificates and provide RSA key generation. One of the advantages with this pen design is that there is no need for a separate digitiser tablet. According to the company, it will also look at implementing future wireless e-commerce applications enabled by technologies, such as Bluetooth. Support for the pen at the recent CardTech/ SecurTech show was strong. Btt heard that the group was approached by a number of potential backers and the company reported new customers representing 3,000 unit sales in the first day alone. Contact: Sam Asseer at LCI Technology Group, Tel: +31 73 64 55 255, Fax: +31 73 64 55 296, email: [email protected]
Btt June 2000 • 5
Law & order/face recognition
Mexican ballot box fraud tackled with biometrics The Mexican Government (Btt May ’00, p3) is to use facial recognition technology to help eliminate duplicate voter registrations for its July presidential election. The election between opposition candidate Vicente Fox Quesada and Francisco Labastida Ochoa, the incumbent party’s candidate, is expected to be extremely tight, making the need for a fraud-free vote even more crucial. Mexico’s Federal Election Institute (IFE) has been awarded a multi-million dollar budget to ensure “fair play”. As part of its efforts it has enlisted the services of Mexico Citybased software integrator MetaData, which will use FaceIt face recognition technology from US supplier Visionics (Btt May ’00, p6), along with its ObjectStore database management system. According to president and CEO of Visionics Joseph Atick: “This is the first time that a national government has used facial recognition technology for the sole purpose of eliminating duplicate voter registrations.” In Mexico, voters must first be issued with a voter registration card before taking it to a ballot box to make their vote. It is at this stage the facial recognition system will be used, as there is the possibility that voters could apply for more than one registration card using false identities. The new system will store a photo of the potential voter in a central IFE database and compare it against the images already stored. According to Visionics, its system can search at a speed of one million records per second, allowing a realtime search process. Contact: Frances Zelazny at Visionics, Tel: +1 201 332 9213, email: [email protected]
4 • Btt June 2000
Physical access control/vein recognition
Asian Telecom group makes large vein recognition order Fiber optic-based communication service provider Hanaro Telecom has taken delivery of 83 vein recognition units at one of its ISP Centres in Korea. The system was delivered by Korean-based supplier BK Systems (Btt Jul/Aug ’99, p9) and represents the company’s biggest vein recognition system order to date. BK Systems told Btt, that all 83 units are networked using BK System’s time and attendance software, Vein Control 2000, which allows all of the units to share the database in realtime. Hanaro Telecom has 70 internet network servers that are available for rent. These are each positioned in their own cage. Following the installation, each of these cages now has one BK 300S unit attached, so access can only be gained by authorised users. The other 13 vein identification units are used by Hanaro’s office employees at the centre. The system’s software has most of the regular time and attendance software functions, such as monitoring clock in/clock out times of users, warning signals for malfunctioning units and variable area and time control. One interesting feature is that the system is connected to the company’s CCTV cameras, which move to capture images of the area that is in use. BK Systems has recently joined forces with Nextern, also based in Korea, which will handle the company’s sales and marketing of the vein recognition systems. Contact: Daniel Choi at BK Systems, Tel: +82 2 3467 5413, Fax: +82 2 3461 6125, email: [email protected]
Financial
Visa reaches one billion and joins biometric study Visa International (Btt May ‘00, p2) has reached the one billion card milestone and given its thoughts on the likely look of its second billion cards.
Visionics launches Pocket PC product Visionics is hoping to capitalise on the proliferation of handheld devices incorporating built-in cameras with the latest version of its face recognition software. FaceIT for Pocket PC is now compatible with the new Microsoft CE operating system, Pocket PC, which is used in a variety of devices, such as Casio’s Cassiopeia, Hewlett Packard’s Jornada and Microsoft’s MiPad. Contact: Frances Zelazny at Visionics, Tel: +1 201 332 9213, email: [email protected]
News According to the president and CEO of Visa Malcom Williamson: “Our goal is to leverage technologies like the internet, chip, wireless and biometrics to provide new choices to our member institutions and their customers, including the option of moving to cardless payments. Of biometrics, Visa stated: “Visa is pursuing the viability of biometric technology, such as fingerprint and voice verification, which will provide Visa member institutions with increased options for cardless authentication to facilitate e-commerce and to deal with emerging information security and privacy issues.” As part of this strategy, Visa told Btt last month it was going to invite some of its member banks to take part in biometric technology trials of their own. In conjunction with this, Visa has just announced it will take part in a six-month comparative trial of fingerprint scanning, facial scanning and electronic signature verification. Being run by New York-based consultants IBG (International Biometric Group) (Btt September ’99, p4) from July, the independent study will also involve the Financial Services Technology Consortium (Btt June ’99, p6). Contact: Chetan Patwardhan at Visa, Tel: +1 650 432 3923, Fax: +1 650 432 7436
Smart cards
Smartcard chips ready for fingerprint matching
Visa’s vital statistics As well as reaching one billion cards worldwide, Visa also reports a number of other impressive statistics. Payment volume in 1999 reached US$1.6 trillion, a 19% growth on the previous year. This involved the processing of over 21.3 billion transactions. Visa now claims to account for approximately 8% of worldwide consumer spending and 50% of all payment transactions over the internet. Contact: Kristina Scott at Visa International, Tel: +1 650 432 3645, email: [email protected]
Industry interest in the storing and matching of templates on smart cards is hotting up as various industry suppliers announced their latest technical achievements at CardTech/SecurTech in Miami last month. Precise Biometrics (Btt May ’00, p6), Miotec and iD2 Technologies (Btt April ’00, p7), all based in Sweden, demonstrated a biometrically signed transaction, where fingerprint matching took place within a smart card chip. The solution could be used to secure emails or ordinary office documents. For this demonstration Precise Biometrics supplied its fingerprint matching software and integrated smartcard and fingerprint reader, while Miotech integrated the matching functionality onto its smart card. iD2 Technologies’ PKI-based software provided encryption and digital signature creation.
In a separate announcement, another supplier active in this area, Veridicom (Btt May ’00, p8), said that it has made an agreement with German smart card manufacturer Giesecke & Devrient (Btt Jul/Aug ’99, p4) to create smart cards with “Matchon-Card” cababilities, similar in concept to Precise Biometrics’ technology. The ability to match the template on a smart card was also announced at the end of last year by French smart card manufacturer Oberthur Card Systems along with id3 Semiconductors (Btt Dec ‘99/Jan ‘00, p2). Swedish supplier Fingerprint Cards (Btt May ’00, p8) also has technology capable of local matching on a smart card chip, according to the company’s president Lennart Carlson. Contact: Peter Höjerback at Precise Biometrics, Tel: +46 46 31 11 10, email: ph@precise biometrics.com
Dynamic signature verification
Smart pen gets makeover Dutch group LCI Technology (Btt April ‘00, p9) has launched a new version of its SMARTpen with a more futuristic design, that apparently appeals more to the younger generation than its earlier version. The technology behind the restyled pen has also been improved. According to LCI, its enhanced BiAS software creates smaller signature templates and processes information ten times faster than the older design. Essentially the pen is a regular ball point that uses sensors to pick up the biometric characteristics inherent in the way a person writes. The pen can now support X509 certificates and provide RSA key generation. One of the advantages with this pen design is that there is no need for a separate digitiser tablet. According to the company, it will also look at implementing future wireless e-commerce applications enabled by technologies, such as Bluetooth. Support for the pen at the recent CardTech/ SecurTech show was strong. Btt heard that the group was approached by a number of potential backers and the company reported new customers representing 3,000 unit sales in the first day alone. Contact: Sam Asseer at LCI Technology Group, Tel: +31 73 64 55 255, Fax: +31 73 64 55 296, email: [email protected]
Btt June 2000 • 5