Biometric Technology Today January 2014 4

NEWS

The Electoral Commission of Namibia has launched biometric registration of voters, reports AllAfrica.com. The registration was scheduled to start on 15 January 2014 and end on 2 March. The biometric solution was manufactured in South Africa.

Bahrain will introduce biometric tests at its borders, according to local reports. Face and eye recognition technology will be employed to prevent blacklisted expatriate workers from re-entering the Gulf state.

Ghana plans to enforce biometric verification ahead of the general elections scheduled for 2016, reports ITWebAfrica.

Biometric enabled security gates at the All Saints Church in Kohati, Pakistan have been put in place to ensure security to those coming to the building for worship, reports thenews.com. The building was bombed in September 2013 when two suicide bombers struck, killing around 87 people and injuring over 100 others.

P R O D U C T N E W S

Fingerprint Cards (FPC) has introduced the FPC1020, a capacitive touch fingerprint sen-sor for smartphones and tablets using Android. FPC1020 is aimed at smartphone and tablet OEMs.

SmartMetric has launched its One Card digital wallet protected with biometrics using FPC’s Fingerprint Swipe Sensor. Also SmartMetric president and CEO Chaya Hendrick has said the SmartMetric biometric fingerprint activat-ed payments card will be available for quantity sales in the first quarter of 2014; the company has had to overcome a number of production issues in order to produce the card in the high volumes required by the banking sector. The SmartMetric biometric card is designed to work with EMV chips and uses a match of a person’s fingerprint that is stored inside the card memory in order to activate the contact or contactless EMV chip.

NXT-ID has announced features of its next generation wallet, The Wocket, scheduled for launch for the first quarter of 2014. The Wocket is designed to replace all credit cards with a single, secure smart card. It works any-where that credit cards are accepted and can only be used with voice biometric or touch-screen authentication.

Zwipe is launching its Zwipe Access biometric card, a contactless card with on-card finger-print scanning and matching functionality that

uses fingerprint touch sensors from Fingerprint Cards (FPC). The Zwipe Access card is ISO 14443 compliant, which enables the card to work with existing contactless readers and access control infrastructure. Fingerprint data is stored inside the secure card and a posi-tive match activates encrypted communication with a reader or lock.

DigitalPersona has introduced the Altus cus-tomer and employee biometric authentication system. The biometrics-based solution allows enterprises to authenticate customers and employees in real time via intranet or VPN. The Altus solution features modules for onsite or mobile enrolment, identity verification and lifecycle management of secure credentials.

Face recognition supplier Sensible Vision has announced its fifth generation of face recogni-tion on Windows PCs and tablets offering up to 2.5 times faster recognition, lower error rate, and enhanced photo rejection.

4G Identity Solutions Private Limited (4Gid) has announced the launch of its Biometric Enabled Electronic-Visa Issuance System (BEVIS). BEVIS is a multi-modal biometric (fingerprint, iris, face and signature) enrolment and verification system that can be used by countries to enrol the demographics and biometrics of visitors while applying for visas at visa service centres, border checkpoints or consulates and verify their identity while entering borders.

C O M P A N Y N E W S

Entertech Systems, the US operating partner for Suprema Inc, has entered into a strategic partnership with Software House, part of the Security Products business unit of Tyco, to provide the Suprema line of biometric devices and readers to Software House and its

-ment system customers. As a result of this partnership, the Suprema line of biometric devices, which includes fingerprint detection, card and PIN devices, and Entertech Systems’ BioConnect application will be resold and supported through Software House. The devices include time and attendance readers, biometric access control readers and applica-tion solutions.

The Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia has begun deployment of sev-eral of Aware’s COTS biometrics software products as part of an update to its visa issuance management process. The new sys-tem uses Aware’s Biometric Services Platform

(BioSP), as well as Universal Registration Client (URC) and related APIs. BioSP is a modular, centralised, service-oriented applica-tion used to implement workflows and manage data exchange between government depart-ments. URC is a biometric enrolment applica-tion that will operate on hundreds of work-stations at consulates and visa service centres globally to collect biometrics from potential visitors to Saudi Arabia. Aware served as the principal subcontractor to Fujitsu Arabia on the project. Aware also recently announced that it supplied products and services to Fujitsu for a similarly-scoped biometric visa applicant screening system deployed in Canada.

Fujitsu Frontech North America Inc and PulseWallet, an electronic transaction point of sale provider, have announced a relationship using PalmSecure biometric authentication technology to streamline the checkout process securely.

Dermalog Identification Systems has signed a $50m contract with the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) to help the bank resolve authen-tication issues and prevent money laundering. Initially rolled out at 25 banks, the project will eventually register the fingerprints of up to 50m customers who will use the system at the counter when depositing or withdrawing cash. Biometric technology will ensure that custom-ers can only have one identity in the bank’s databases, preventing fraud. Longer term, the system will see the introduction of biometric ATMs, and point of sale terminals.

Voice biometrics supplier Agnitio has partnered with Dictao, a provider of software solutions for digital trust and security, to offer a Voice iD authentication solution to its commercial clients that include BNP Paribas, BPCE, SG, Ministère de l’Intérieur, Total, and Airbus.

Hoyos Labs has been launched. It has devel-oped an end-to-end solution for identity authentication, using biometrics as a part of the authentication process and has received $10m in funding. Hoyos Labs is a digital infra-structure security company with a research and development division operating from the Cambridge Innovation Center on the campus of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Hoyos Labs’ identity assertion products use a multi-biometric recognition system that includes the face, periocular region and iris to confirm one’s identity. The technology leverages smartphones as biometrics acquisi-tion devices (on the front-end), interacts with middleware and accesses the back-end before identity authentication.

N E W S I N B R I E F