M2SYS Blog On Biometric Technology

ACS church management software check-in with the M2-EasyScan Reader

Please enjoy this guest blog post from ACS Technologies, a M2SYS partner who provides excellence in information management solutions for the faith-based community.

This post was written by Eleanor Pierce, Communications Strategist at ACS Technologies.  A link to the ACS Community Blog page can be found here.

Imagine the rush of people at check-in before church services on a Sunday morning. Hundreds of families, all trying to move through the process as quickly as possible so they’re not the one trying to sneak in after the sermon has already started. Today’s churches are looking for anything that can a) speed the process of checking kids in and b) assure the security of kids and c) create accurate attendance records and pickup lists.

Checking-in 350 kids in 10 minutes

Northwoods Community Church in Peoria, Ill., checks in about 800 kids every weekend, between its four services at two different campuses.

“For our 11 o’clock service, it’s probably close to 350,” said Jason Lee, Information Technology Director at the church. “We’re trying to process that many children in, let’s say a 10 minute window.” Creating a smooth check-in experience isn’t optional, it’s necessary.

“People don’t come early just to check in. We needed to create something that accommodates the attendees, because we could say sure, we’ll just put in one kiosk, but you’ve got to come 30 minutes early to church to check in,” Jason said—but of course, that approach wouldn’t won’t work for the attendees.

That’s why Northwoods has several self-check-in stations that use biometric technology. There’s a guest services desk for those who are not yet in the church’s database, or those who have brought a child that’s a guest, perhaps a cousin or neighbor. For those who are already entered in the system, there are stations where parents can check-in their kids quickly and easily, using a biometric scanner.

The preregistration requirement allows the Northwoods staff to be sure they know the kids who are being checked in and to assure that parents have signed any release forms. Once the paperwork has been handled, staff help parents pre-scan their finger so that they’re entered into the M2SYS system.

Returning parents who have been entered into the system can check-in at an express kiosk. “They walk up, scan their finger, and then it comes up and displays all the children in their family that can be checked in,” Jason explained.

Using the finger scanner with parents instead of the kids assures that parents are actually dropping their kids off in person, rather than just pulling up their cars out front and letting their child come inside alone.  While it might save a parent time, Northwoods doesn’t like the safety issues for kids younger than 5^th grade.

One key benefit to biometric scanners is that there’s no way to forget what you need to check in.

“You could use a barcode, any sort of RFID, but you can forget those at home,” Jason said, “But it’s pretty challenging to forget your fingers unless you get in a fight with a lawnmower.”

Midwest dry skin = tough-to-capture fingerprints

Northwoods initially used a fingerprint scanner, but tough Midwestern weather means that there can be problems getting a good fingerprint. One problem is that cold winters and dry air can make fingerprints difficult to capture. Also, people who work outside and have calloused hands just might not have a good fingerprint at all. For that reason, Northwoods is in the process of transitioning to finger vein scanners for all check-in. They’ve already begun using the new scanners at one of their satellite campuses, and they’re getting ready to move the 1,500 parents who have been entered into their system using finger prints to re-scan using finger veins.

“The scanners are easier to use, the technology is not environmentally dependent, and it’s very accurate,” Jason said. While testing the machines with his own hand, he tried to create an error.

“I tried to get my finger to scan wrong, and unless I turned my finger sideways, it worked,” he said.

A real partnership

One aspect he’s been very happy with is the working relationship between ACS Technologies and M2SYS. Northwoods uses M2SYS in conjunction with its ACS Technolgies check-in software. It’s a totally integrated system that helps the church keep track of the families that attend the chuch.

“It’s nice to have a partner. That ACS Technologies said M2SYS is good, go work with them, and it’s not some just random third party that we’ve picked up off the shelf, that’s key for us; knowing that we have the support and backing of ACS Technologies and that they have the backing and support of M2SYS.”

Jason Lee also writes a blog called “Bytes about bits in church IT”

Ears

The following is a guest post from Jason Hodge, Vice President of Business Development for SecurLinx.  SecurLinx specializes in networked biometric deployments and multi-modal biometric integration.  You can read more about biometric technology on the SecurLinx blog which can be found at http://securlinx.blogspot.com/

Iris, Retina, Face, Fingerprint, Finger vein, Palm geometry, Palm vein, gait, ear, DNA, body odor, voice, typing rhythm, signature recognition.  The range of human physical traits and behaviors offers fertile ground for scientists interested in quantifying them for use in identifying individuals.

Two main forces have influenced the selection of biometric identification modality from the near limitless choices: Convenience and Necessity.

Face and fingerprint have been by far the most convenient from both scientific and deployment perspectives.

Scientists need data to develop the algorithms that biometric systems use to identify individuals.  For face and finger, data was never a problem.  Bureaucracies have been collecting both for a century.

In deployment, it’s easy and convenient for participating individuals to interact with the technology.

Necessity, playing its usual role, has driven the development of other biometric modalities.  From a development perspective, given enough data, time and money, I suspect any definable aspect of the human anatomy could be used as a biometric identifier.

In instances where teeth are all that is known about an individual, they are used for high confidence identification.

As long as the telephone is with us as a ubiquitous communication tool, there will be significant demand for voice recognition no matter the challenges.

In order to displace finger/hand and face/eye biometrics in wide scale deployments, the newer biometric modalities will have to out-compete them on two levels, in the lab and in the market.  But in order to thrive as high value-added tools in highly specialized deployments they just need to help solve a high value problem.

Any biometric modality can be useful, especially if it’s the only one available.

Jason can be reached at Mail: blog@securlinx.com Twitter: @SecurLinx URL: www.securlinx.com

Biometric technology and privacy concerns are often perceived as being at odds with each other. The public frequently hold negative associations with biometric technology, yet biometric verification systems if done correctly need not be a threat to privacy or liberty. My hope here is to trigger debate between those of us who hold concerns about privacy, and an industry that is eager to find new applications for an emergent technology.

Let me start by talking a bit about privacy. It’s my view that many people are not rational when deciding what is or isn’t a threat to privacy.  Many privacy campaigners get frustrated when the public and media seemingly ignore what we consider to be the biggest threats. Many of us have now realised that if people can’t see what happens to their data then they often don’t pay an interest in it. As the old saying goes, out of sight is out of mind.

To give you an example, we are now trying to raise concern about census information collect by the British government being trafficked through legal loop holes in ‘Section 39 of the ‘Statistics and Registration Service Act 2007’. Getting people excited about ‘Section 39 of the Statistics and Registration Service Act’ here in the UK is almost impossible. What does wind some people up is Lockheed Martin’s involvement. The idea of a US arms company secretly gaining information plays into anti-American sentiments. Sadly these sentiments trump the more realistic privacy concern of information being shared by British institutions within the country under British law.

Biometrics technology has a habit of triggering the same sort of response that a census worker knocking on the door might. Many folk have an emotive response when asked to hand over a bit of their biometric information. Often the biometric aspect of a system distracts people from what we consider the real privacy threat – mainly the logging and tracking of users interacting with a system, and the subsequent dissemination of information collected to external bodies.

To understand why biometric technology invokes such reactions we have to consider the visceral nature of having an attribute of your body captured. There is something about this physical process that seems instinctively intrusive to people. This sense of intrusion causes people to react in a manner that information shared behind their back doesn’t.  Even the language of capturing biometrics suggests an infringement of freedom – that something about your person has been taken from you.

When we start to think about people’s emotive reaction to privacy issues we can understand why Google’s Street View ran into problems. People don’t like a strange car driving down their street and taking pictures of their property.  This contrasts sharply with the mass retention of search terms by Google that I personally consider a far bigger privacy issue, but which only excites a minority. Yet this isn’t the only reason people dislike biometrics. Sadly they have become associated with many systems that are a threat to privacy.

Governments have consistently used claims based on biometric technology as a cover to establish systems that not only provide a verification service, but also control identity. Tony Blair claimed that “biometrics give us the chance to have a secure identity”,  the Indian UID project claims biometrics help create a universal identity, and the Malaysian biometric MyKad ID card has been used to differentiate between people on the basis of their religion. In doing this governments have associated biometrics with attempts to control identity, and control people.

The organisation NO2ID, for which I work, defeated the British National Identity Scheme. The entire purpose of this scheme was to collect biometric and personal data of the entire population of the UK, to build the National Identity Register.  Knowledge is power and a government that controls a national population register controls society. If you can’t legally interact with society and services on a day to day basis unless you are on the system, then your interactions are automatically governed by the bureaucratic rules established to govern the system.

Such schemes are inevitably popular with bureaucracies, oppressive states and governments. Not only do such organisations get to set the rules, but they get to generate an income from them. This is sustained either by directly charging citizens to enrol on the system or through general taxation.  Globally a range of issues from under-age drinking, immigration to the distribution of aid have been used as justification for establishing governmental control over Identity.  Such is the extent of this phenomena that quite a few campaigners now kick up a fuss at the very mention of biometric technology, whether or not the specific application is or isn’t a realistic concern. These government funded projects that use biometrics are starting to define biometric technology as an instrument of control.

It need not be this way. When designing a system there is no necessity to have a centralised register that logs and tracks each time a biometric verification occurs. Such logging and surveillance need not be a function of any biometric system.  Biometric technology holds the possibility of enhancing privacy by reducing the need for us to provide multiple sources of personal information for the process of verification. It is possible to use a smart card platform to build a system where the encrypted biometric information is held only on a card, and only compared to local gathered scan, not a centralised database. Once you have been enrolled on such a system you do not need to leave a data trail every time you engage with it for the process of verification.

Entrepreneurs and campaigners need to work together to promote and encourage privacy friendly biometric solutions. Government projects that attempt to define identity and track citizens may provide great business opportunities for the select few lucky enough to win big projects, but they restrict the wider markets’ ability to provide biometric solutions. I mean why would anyone have invested in a privacy friendly process of age verification here in the UK when our Home Office was threatening to impose its monolithic monopoly on the market? Globally many governments don’t ‘do’ privacy, maybe if we roll back the database state and allow industry to create privacy friendly solutions together we can.

This post was submitted by James Baker, a political consultant who works with the NO2ID campaign. James can be reached at Mail: james@jd-baker.com Twitter: @jamesdbaker1 URL: www.no2id.net

What are your privacy concerns about using biometrics?  Please share them in the comments section below.

This guest post was submitted by ZOLL, the leading provider of solutions that help fire and EMS organizations of all sizes optimize their people, processes, and technology, leading to clinical excellence and business success.

This post was written by Tara Delone, Marketing Manager at ZOLL.

Emergency Medical Services (EMS), as in many industries, is starting to realize the benefits of using a biometric device for employees to sign into various applications.  ZOLL has partnered with M2SYS to integrate biometric identification technology with our time and attendance software solution that helps organizations optimize their crew scheduling needs and reduces cost at the same time boosting crew satisfaction, reducing overtime cost, improving schedule compliance, and increasing payroll accuracy.  With the addition of  biometric technology EMS organizations can also increase security, reduce or illuminate fraud or buddy punching, eliminate problems with lost ID cards or hard to remember passwords and boost efficiency when punching in/out of the application.

Increasingly, biometric technology is becoming more prevalent in EMS environments due to the distinct advantages that it offers and the efficiencies it creates.  Bill Savidge from Hart to Heart Ambulance, Inc. in Forest Hills, MD states,“ While no system is “fail safe”, Hart to Heart is greatly impressed by the functionality of  biometric technology for tracking time and attendance.  Biometric hardware is extremely durable and fairly priced. The biggest advantage is the simple seconds it takes to punch in/out daily vs. an employee actually using a physical time card or some type of hand typed punch system…..as we know, seconds add to minutes and to hours, especially in our business.  Biometrics tied in with ZOLL’s Crew Scheduler, have been a welcome addition and a vital cog in how Hart to Heart pays employees and keeps track of time to the second.”

For more information or a demo of EMS time and attendance software please visit Zoll’s Web site.

Could your EMS environment benefit from biometric technology for time and attendance?  What types of cost savings could you realize from using biometrics?

Please enjoy this guest blog post from our Partner, Horizon Software.  Horizon Software International is an innovative global leader in software, services and technologies for food service operations. The company, a Microsoft Gold Certified Partner headquartered near Atlanta, GA, offers comprehensive food service solutions including Point of Service (POS), inventory management, menu planning, procurement, production, digital signage, temperature management, integrated vending, and more.

This post was written by Amy Huff, SNS, Vice President, Marketing at Horizon Software.

Many schools are realizing that biometric identification is no longer a high-tech futuristic concept and that it can significantly increase serving line speeds in the cafeteria.  Biometrics is a practical and affordable method of identification, removing the drawbacks associated with forgotten PINs, lost cards, and the potential for misuse due to bullying and other factors.

There are significant benefits to using biometrics for student identification:

Improve efficiency – Serving line speeds improve significantly when using biometrics rather than traditional identification methods. With biometrics, schools are able to avoid backed-up lunch lines due to misplaced cards or forgotten PIN codes.  One school system tested PIN pads versus biometrics and found that biometric identification was two minutes faster per 100 transactions.  With school cafeteria lines processing hundreds or thousands of students, those minutes really add up and make a difference in overall line speed.

Save time and money – A school’s staff no longer has to spend valuable time reissuing PIN codes and replacing forgotten, lost or stolen swipe cards.  And, it’s not just time they are saving; schools also no longer have the cost of producing the cards.

Boost security and protect privacy – Unlike ID cards and PINs, students cannot steal another student’s biometric template to gain access to another student’s account.

With all these benefits, why aren’t all districts using biometric technology?  The answer is that the biggest obstacle to using biometric technology is the misconception parents have in regard to what biometric technology is.

The misconception that students are being fingerprinted often hinders the adoption of this form of identification.  It is important to convey to school districts that particular care has been taken to ensure personal privacy.  Fingerprint images are NOT stored and the data is stored in a proprietary format, using secure encryption.

Instead of storing fingerprint images, the system stores only templates that are a numeric representation of the individual fingerprint.  Templates can be used for matching, but the actual fingerprint cannot be reconstructed.  Schools can rest assured that fingerprints are not stored anywhere and fingerprints cannot be recreated from the encrypted digital templates.

Beyond conveying this to school districts, it is even more important that the school districts communicate to parents when implementing biometric solutions.  Once they realize their children are not being fingerprinted and that this technology makes it very difficult for another student to gain access to another’s meal account, it is easy for them to see the benefits.

Fingerprint recognition is becoming the recommended method for education environments in secondary schools because it is reliable, cost-effective, easy to use, and secure.