Computer Reseller News

Biometric Devices A Reality: It's A 007 World After All

By Marcia Savage
Fri., July 28, 2000

Biometrics, technology that identifies users by scanning their face, fingerprint or voice, was featured at last month's PC Expo, held here. Integrators and vendors were upbeat about the technology's prospects.

Biometrics has advanced in the past few months, says Samir Nanavati, partner at International Biometric Group, a New York-based integration and consulting firm that sponsored a biometrics pavilion at PC Expo. Several factors, including the new e-signatures law and Microsoft's plan to integrate biometric technology into future versions of the Windows operating system, are pushing clients who were researching the technology to implement it, he says.

Biometric devices identify you by scanning your face, fingerprint or voice.

"It's moving people from the investigation stage to 'let's do this,' " Nanavati says.

In May, Microsoft acquired Riverside, Calif.-based I/O Software's Biometric API technology and SecureSuite core authentication technology. By integrating biometrics into Windows, users will be able to log on via fingerprints, iris patterns or voice recognition. One of the seven vendors showing off their technology was Viisage Technology, Littleton, Mass., which offers facial-recognition systems. Tom Colatosti, president and CEO of Viisage, says the company is working with several banks to integrate the technology into their ATMs. He expects full-scale deployment by the end of this year or beginning of next year. Fifty-eight casinos incorporate Viisage's technology in surveillance systems to catch cheaters.
In addition to surveillance and point-of-sale devices, other promising areas for biometrics are physical access, PC access and wireless, Colatosti says.

Gretchen Lewis, marketing director at Viisage, says growth of e-commerce and accompanying security concerns will help push acceptance of biometrics.

"If you want to know [with whom] you're doing business, biometrics is a great way to do that," she says.
Microsoft's support of biometrics will help promote the industry overall by providing a guiding standard, says Steve Mansfield, vice president of marketing at AuthenTec, a Melbourne, Fla.-based provider of fingerprint identification technology.

AuthenTec makes chips that look beyond the surface of the skin by applying a small electrical charge to create a digital pattern of a fingerprint's underlying structure. The company partners with device makers. Also pushing adoption of biometrics is user revolt against multiple passwords. Users complain to IT managers if they are required to remember more than two or three passwords, Mansfield says.

However, any company contemplating a biometric solution has to do the math, says Frank Prince, senior analyst at Forrester Research. While passwords cost next to nothing, biometrics requires a hardware device at every computing system where a business wants to control access.