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NEWS/COMMENT
Biometric Technology Today May 2013
...Continued from page 3
Until now, biometric identity verification
has been delivered either by fixed location
solutions or difficult to use mobile products
with limited functionality, says Alan Goode,
managing director, Goode Intelligence. By
leveraging the capabilities of the iPhone, and
its own deep experience in identity solutions,
AOptix is providing an ideal mobile identity
platform which will greatly expand the use
of biometrics to many new applications and
markets.
Built with an open architecture, AOptix
Stratus enables SI/VAR partners to develop
applications. The launch of AOptix Stratus
provides a capability for Smart Mobile Identity
around iPhone that will open up a new range
of applications for biometrics, says Peter
Waggett, emerging technology program leader
at IBM. The product provides the basis for an
ecosystem of Smart Mobile Identity products
and apps that we will use to develop and deliver
solutions.
The AOptix Stratus family includes AOptix
Stratus MX, AOptix Stratus App for iOS and
AOptix Stratus SDK. AOptix Stratus MX is
a rugged hardware peripheral that houses an
iPhone 4 or 4S and contains a fingerprint
sensor and an advanced AOptix iris imaging
system.
AOptix Stratus complements AOptix
InSight, the companys high throughput prod-
uct line, currently verifying the identities of
over 50m travellers a year. Used in combina-
tion, these products provide the foundation
for new networked biometric applications,
such as law enforcement. For example,
AOptix InSight can perform iris and face
enrollment at precinct booking stations while
AOptix Stratus provides identity authentica-
tion wherever required.
SmartMetric adds NFC
to biometric card
S
martMetric has incorporated NFC
(near field communication) into its
fingerprint activated biometric chip
card for use by financial institutions
around the world. This will enable
institutions to offer a safer NFC solu-
tion than that which is currently avail-
able since the NFC biometric card will
only allow NFC communication to
work when the user touches the cards
fingerprint sensor.
President and CEO of SmartMetric, Chaya
Hendrick says, Smartphones are a good exam-
ple of unsafe NFC systems. Because a smart-
phone is always network connected, even when
the phone is off, it is open to hacker attack. Even
if a smartphone company added a fingerprint
sensor to its phone it would not overcome the
built in weakness of the phone being always net-
work connected and thereby being susceptible to
hacker attack.
SmartMetric points out that it has spent
years of R&D to reduce the size of the com-
ponents of a fingerprint biometric reader to
fit inside a card the size of a credit card.
EyeLock and Capco
target financial
services
I
ris-based authentication supplier
EyeLock has partnered with Capco,
a global business and technology
consultancy dedicated to the finan-
cial services industry, to implement
EyeLocks identity authentication
security solutions across the financial
services sector.
Capco recently launched its Secure
Banking and Capital Markets practice. The
goal of this practice is to increase security
for financial institutions by implementing
EyeLocks iris authentication technology.
The banking and capital markets industries
are currently facing a very serious security
crisis, says Bill Adiletta, New York technology
partner at Capco. Each year, financial firms
lose tens of billions of dollars due to security
breaches. There has long been a need to find
a better solution as security risks continue to
escalate, especially as we move to an increas-
ingly digital society.
He adds, Fortunately, the technology
to prevent security breaches has progressed
exponentially. EyeLocks iris authentication
system delivers the technology to effectively
reduce cost, mitigate fraud and increase con-
sumer satisfaction. That is a powerful triple-
play.
When it became clear that
images of the men suspect-
ed of the Boston marathon
bombing had been captured
on CCTV, for perhaps the
first time following such an
incident there was widespread expectation that
facial recognition technology would identify the
suspects.
After the incident, debate raged about the
failure of the technology and the need to
capture more or fewer biometrics. In fact, all
biometric systems have a failure rate even in
ideal conditions and the images captured were
a long way from ideal.
As biometric technology becomes increas-
ingly part of the mainstream, the focus
seems to be shifting from whether large-scale
implementations of the technology will work
towards just how well they work.
Hard and soft biometrics that work natu-
rally together look set to plug gaps in certain
applications and make identification and
authentication more reliable at the same time
as increasing the usability of the application.
Gesture recognition is a soft biometric that
until now has been associated with gaming.
And purists would argue that gesture recogni-
tion is not proper biometric technology as the
only recognition going on is that of what the
gesture conveys; the system does not in any
way identify or authenticate anyone.
Yet gesture recognition is a soft biometric,
one that recognises intent or gender for exam-
ple, that could eventually support biometrics
such as facial recognition, to establish who
someone is, or whether or not they are who
they say they are.
Intel has predicted that after touch, it
will not be long before well commonly use
gestures with our mobile devices. Voice rec-
ognition will also become more common and
facial recognition will be offered alongside
gesture recognition, Intel says. And chipmaker
AMDs latest APUs also provide gesture recog-
nition features alongside facial log-in.
Recent weeks have brought interesting
developments in gesture recognition. Thalmic
Labs has launched the MYO, an armband
device that reads muscle-based electrical
impulses allowing the wearer to control pres-
entations, video, games and web browsing,
just for starters.
The first shipment of 25,000 units is now
sold out and will be shipping in late 2013.
Gesture recognition is achieved by detecting
a persons unique muscle activity combined
with motion sensing. The team has built APIs
for PCs and Macs, and is working on more
for iOS and Android. Thalmic Labs is encour-
aging developers to to use MYO in ways we
havent even dreamt of . It will be interesting
to see what these are.
Tracey Caldwell
COMMENT
banking