March - biometrics and cloud computing

When: March 1, 2012

11:00 am EST, 8:00 am PST, 16:00 pm BST, 17:00 pm (CEST), 23:00 pm (SGT), 0:00 (JST)

Where: tweetchat.com (hashtag #biometricchat)

What: Tweet chat on biometrics and cloud computing

Topics: The exponential growth of biometric data, leveraging the cloud for big data biometrics, applications that can benefit from biometric cloud computing, the burdens of new biometric modalities, the future of biometrics and the cloud

We are pleased to announce that Terry Hartmann from Unisys will be joining us at the March #biometricchat to discuss the past, current and possible future state of biometric cloud computing. The explosion of biometric data records in the last few years has precipitated the need to find efficient ways to store and process identity verification at often real-time speeds for the institutions that rely on this technology for security and other uses. Cloud computing has provided a fortuitous venue to store and process this data, our goal for the chat is to ask Terry some questions about the history of biometrics and the cloud, what advances have been made in the past few years and what we expect to see in the future as petabytes of biometric data mount and more agencies and organizations seek efficiency, speed and continued security for their deployments.

Just in case you are interested in participating but are new to Tweet chats, please read this post which outlines the instructions and procedures. We hope that you will join us for the discussion, and please spread the word among your colleagues and friends.

Do you have any questions that you would like to ask Terry? Please send them to: john@m2sys.com or come prepared with your questions, comments and feedback on Thursday, March the 1st at 11am EST.

Fujitsu and M2SYS Webinar

Word is spreading across the workforce management landscape about the benefits of using biometric employee identification for time and attendance. Most notably, biometric technology has proven to:

• be a more affordable alternative to expensive wall mounted time clocks
• eliminate “buddy punching” resulting in a more productive work force
• reduce payroll inflation and payroll error rates
• be more secure and efficient than a PIN or ID card

Recently, we teamed up with Fujitsu to offer an educational webinar to our healthcare community about the benefits of palm vein biometric employee identification as a workforce management tool including:

• the problems with traditional punch options
• introduction to our RightPunch™ PC-based biometric time clock
• the architecture and process flow of RightPunch™
• advantages of using Fujitsu’s palm vein biometric modality
• advantages of using biometrics for employee ID
• case studies of successful deployments for our RightPunch™ biometric time clock

To view a copy of this webinar, please click on this link or visit Fujitsu’s Web site for more information on their “PalmSecure for Healthcare Webinar Series.”

Photo Courtesy of: kexino

Today’s guest post is by Natasha Tasha.

More and more international governments and security-intensive companies are using biometric-enabled identity cards for their employees and professionals. As this technology becomes more widespread, the need to make this technology more mobile, and more accessible is becoming clear. Experts all over the globe are pushing for cloud-based biometrics for greater efficiency and mobility.

With this comes a host of concerns. The main one being security and reliability. With major players in cloud computing making the news with outages and security breaches, critics of cloud computing and biometrics integration have only become more vocal. Still, it’s clear that both large governments and organizations need an efficient way to organize and manage this large amount of data. In fact, it’s also becoming evident that sheer CPU power is no longer enough to manage the petabytes of data that biometrics identity systems require.

The overarching immediate need will be to create large-scale cloud-based applications that could house the massive amounts of biometrics data. One big hurdle comes with migrating these massive databases over to cloud computing applications. But experts are convinced this is not much of a hurdle with the powerful virtualization available through virtual servers and cloud hosting providers.

Additionally, many government agency officials believe that cloud computing applications for biometrics would increase security when it comes to large-scale terrorist watch programs. Cloud biometrics management systems could also provide increased efficiency in social services and criminal watch management. Experts posit that streamlined cloud systems could give government agencies access to an individual’s entire history at a glance. This would dramatically cut down the use and drainage of government resources, as cloud data management systems tend to reduce workloads significantly.

In the private sector, particularly with defense-based corporations, cloud systems would serve a similar function. Since defense companies often work with security-sensitive data, cloud applications could increase efficiency by streamlining efforts to manage data and information connected to security clearance. As would be the case in the government sector, all of this information could be easily accessed in one place so complicated data management processes are seamlessly streamlined.

Government agencies, terrorist watch groups and defense contractors are ready and willing to use this technology. But as with any cloud-based data management system, there is the immediate concern of security. When it comes to defense and government data management, heavy encryption is a key component of any cloud-based data security plan. Still, there are several critics of moving sophisticated biometrics data to the cloud. Many of these critics vocalize concern over whether or not the cloud would increase national security risks with the rise of global and politically charged “hacktivists” who have brought down significant websites, like the Federal Bureau of Investigation, as well as major financial institutions, like Visa, MasterCard, Bank of America, Chase and PayPal.

Cloud computing for biometrics advocates push back on these criticisms with assurance that cloud applications used on the government level have multiple and sophisticated layers of security, which have been developed by cutting edge cloud security specialists all over the globe.

Tasha is writer and blogger, currently exploring cloud computing, virtual servers and other popular tech related trends 

February biometric chat

When: February 9, 2012

11:00 am EST, 8:00 am PST, 16:00 pm BST, 17:00 pm (CEST), 23:00 pm (SGT), 0:00 (JST)

Where: tweetchat.com (hashtag #biometricchat)

What: Tweet chat on biometrics for employee identification in workforce management

Topics: Advantages of using biometrics, ROI metrics, common misunderstandings of biometrics, future trends

We took a temporary hiatus in January, but we are back in February with a fresh new subject to discuss on the monthly #biometricchat – biometrics in workforce management. Happy to announce that this month’s guest for the chat will be Scott Barker, a product marketing manager with Kronos, Inc. (@Kronosinc on Twitter) who will be answering questions about the applications of biometric employee identification in workforce management, specifically:

1. Metrics that businesses can use to measure their ROI after investing in biometric employee identification
2. Common misunderstandings about biometric technology
3. Future trends for biometrics  in workforce management
4. Advantages of using biometrics

Just in case you are interested in participating but are new to Tweet chats, please read this post which outlines the instructions and procedures. We hope that you will join us for the discussion, and please spread the word among your colleagues and friends.

Do you have any questions that you would like to ask Scott? Please send them to: john@m2sys.com or come prepared with your questions, comments and feedback on Thursday, February the ninth at 11am EST.

Retail Smart Guys

In celebration of the National Retail Federation’s Annual “Retail’s Big Show Convention” this week, we welcomed a guest post from Dan Jablons at Retail Smart Guys. Dan was recently our guest on the monthly #biometricchat where he talked about the value of using biometric technology in a retail environment, especially at point-of-sale for employees. For a copy of that chat transcript, please click here.

I’d like to tell you that this idea came to me while “contemplating in my study” or something as academic and erudite as that.  Truth is, it just sorta came to me while working with a prospective client.  And after it hit me, I realized that this is the basis for survival for all of us.

The person I was working with was in tears.  Too many bills, not enough sales, and their retail business was in great danger.  This person was in a constant state of unbridled worry, sleepless nights, and economic torture.  I suppose we’ve all been through that to some degree or another, and I really just wanted to help that person through this disaster.

It got me thinking about the causes of such stress and worry.  Granted, sales have been down (although they are picking up in some areas), and times are definitely tougher now than they were years ago.  I suppose there are some people who can just naturally handle the stress better than others, or who can simply shake off the bad news.  But that doesn’t really help the people who need help, who are stressed out and need relief.

That’s when it hit me.  It’s a pretty simple solution, amazingly enough.

Worry and stress happen because of uncertainty.  If you are uncertain that you’ll survive, or how you’ll survive, you will worry because the path to success, freedom, and happier times is not visible to you.  As such, everything you look at becomes a problem, everyone you talk to makes you crazy, and life is just unlivable.  Pretty awful.

So what’s the answer?  The antidote to worry and stress is a solid plan, which followed step-by-step would lead you out of the mess you are in, into success.  Simple, right?

The hard part is coming up with the plan, and I believe that it is a rare individual that can do it alone.  Consider this analogy: if you are lost in the woods, you’d need someone who can see where you are, relative to the main road, to help you find your way out.  You might find your own way out, but you’ll wander those dark scary woods alone for a long time before you make it out, and that’s IF you can make it out.

The plan will come from a variety of resources – for retailers, we collect data from their point of sale system, which helps us see the current situation and all the elements that led to it (what was received, what was sold, what we’re stuck with, etc.).  From there, we can look at the current data and derive a solution that gets the retailer out of trouble.  Sure, it’s not easy, and it’s never a quick fix, but with hard work, patience, and most importantly, a solid plan, you can solve anything.

I’ve actually seen this work by applying it to myself.  If I find myself worried about an action plan, a client, or any other area, I call in the experts.  They help me see what I cannot see.  They help me to know what I don’t know, what I cannot figure out on my own, etc.  It plainly, simply, works.

So if you are a retailer and you are struggling, or are worried or stressed out, get a plan.  Contact me for help.

You can also follow Dan on Twitter @danjab

The University of Maine

Today we announced that the University of Maine has deployed the M2SYS palm vein scanner with our Hybrid Bio Snap-On™ Platform and Hybrid Bio-Hyperpliance Multi-Biometric Identification Matching Server software for student check-in at their on-campus dining halls. The goal for the deployment is to use the palm vein scanner to more effectively track dining hall traffic and eliminate shared cards where students share their meal plans at a price of $4,100 per academic year.

University of Maine officials chose the comprehensive M2SYS Hybrid Bio-SnapOn™ solution because of the fact that it instantly interfaced with their dining hall lunch line point-of-service (POS) software without any code level development on their part. In addition, due to the large size of their student enrollment database and their decision to deploy the palm vein scanner as their biometric hardware of choice, the University also chose to deploy Bio-Hyperpliance™ which is a scalable, hyper-threaded multi-biometric matching server designed to increase matching speeds and boost convenience for large scale deployments.

We are starting to see more and more Universities using the M2SYS palm vein scanner and other biometric identification (finger vein, fingerprint) on their campuses to help increase efficiency, reduce expenses and establish more accountability in areas like employee workforce management and student dining hall lunch line POS. As more Universities across the country catch on to the benefits of using biometrics for identification, we expect this growth to continue.

For a copy of the news release please click here.

Proponents say that the project will help lift many citizens out of poverty, keep welfare funds from being siphoned by corrupt politicians and improve the efficiency and effectiveness of government spending on public welfare. Opponents argue that capturing biometric data is tantamount to an invasion of privacy and India’s government can’t be trusted to store this type of data which could be exploited to set up surveillance on citizens or shared with other countries.

Some interesting facts about the UID project:

• Over 1.2 billion citizens in India
• 2.4 billion irises
• 12 billion fingerprints

Here is the video:

What are your thoughts on India’s UID project? Will it be successful at its proposed intentions or exploited by the government?

U.S. soldier capturing biometric information

A story published in Wired today reported that the U.S. is keeping the Iraqi biometric database that it assembled over the course of the war effort as a “tool for counterterrorism.” During the 8 year war in Iraq, the U.S. military actively collected biometric information on three million Iraqis largely to flesh out suspected insurgents and distinguish them from normal citizens. Residents in hot spots like Fallujah, citizens aiming to join the Iraqi police force and those who worked on U.S. military bases are examples of groups targeted by the U.S. for collection of biometric information.

The logical question that arises is why the U.S. did not hand over the biometric database to Iraqi officials once the war ended. Speculation is that because of continued sectarian divides within Iraq, officials there simply could not be trusted to maintain the database in the face of potential theft of the information from insurgents and other militia groups that still exist within the region. The article goes on to report that the U.S. has also collecting biometric information on citizens of Afghanistan for years even going as far as revealing that documents released by Wikileaks suggest that efforts have been made to collect biometric information on foreign leaders.

Although the U.S. claims that collection of Afghan and Iraqi biometric data is all for counterterrorism purposes, there are bound to be questions raised about the true intentions of the database and whether this effort is part of a larger strategy to amass a large scale biometric database of rogue countries. Can we expect all future war efforts to include a campaign that collects biometric data of all citizens? How secure is the information in U.S. hands? Does this violate any international laws governing the civil rights of individuals? If not, should there be safeguards in place that protect the biometric information of an individual and dictate who has the right to collect and store this information?

Clearly the use of biometrics to find and capture those responsible for crimes like genocide, terrorism and corruption is an important tool in the fight for freedom and equality but as the military use of biometric identification increases across the global landscape there are bound to be questions, issues and controversies that will result which may jeopardize the potential of this technology to be an effective tool to identify individuals.

What are your thoughts? Should the U.S. be allowed to keep the a biometric database of Iraqi’s and Afghan citizens or citizens of any other country?

Mobbeel Mobile Biometrics

Today’s guest post is by Mobbeel, who provides biometric security solutions (iris, voice and signature recognition) for mobile devices. Their targeted platforms are Android, iPhone, Blackberry, Symbian, Maemo, Bada and Windows Phone 7.

“Science is built upon approaches that gradually come closer to the truth.” Isaac Asimov.

In 1879, Alphonse Berthillon, head of the French police photography department, suggested that people could be identified by precise physical measurements. His system was based on measuring certain lengths and widths of the head and the body, as well as recording individual marks like tattoos or scars. This system was quickly adopted widely by American and British police forces until system failures began to appear, the main problems with measuring changes. From that time onwards, western police forces started using fingerprinting to identify criminals. In recent years, biometrics has grown from just using a fingerprint, to employING many different identification methods that fall into two broad categories: physiology and behavior.

Physiological biometrics is based on measuring the individual’s unique physical characteristics, such as fingerprint details, patterns of retina veins, iris characteristics or the size and shape of the hand.

Behavioral biometrics identifies unique learning characteristics, such as signature, keystrokes or voice recognition, which compares frequencies and vocal patterns to identify the speaker.

ID cards, PINs and passwords do not actually identify a person, as the owner may transfer any of these identifications to another person. Only biometric readers identify people by unique and unchanging characteristics. If someone steals or guesses your password, the thief could access your information without difficulty, but to impersonate you using your biometric profile, although not impossible, is much harder. We can prove the low reliability of traditional identification methods through iSpy. This is a software package that captures what is written on the cellphone at a distance of 3 to 60 meters. The goal of North Carolina University researchers who have developed iSpy was to check whether the use of cellphones in public places could be a risk. The software succeeds in 90% of the cases identifying which keys the user is pressing.

To solve this security issue, the biometrics industry continues innovating and researching for new biometric methods to identify people such as body odor, ear structure or brain electromagnetic signals. One of the most advanced techniques with great potential due to its simplicity is vascular biometrics. This technique studies the thickness and distance between the veins that lie under our skin. As this is an internal standard, it leaves no trace, providing a high level of security. We can have this technology in our cellphones sooner than we thought.

Unlike laptops, which we sometimes leave at home or in the office, mobiles are always with us wherever we stay, wherever we go. This fact awakens the interest of thieves, who are attracted by device price-size relationship, but if we think carefully, the information it contains can be worth much more. A survey performed by GetSafeOnline.org says that smartphone ‘malware’ has increased by 800% in just 4 months. For this reason, biometrics will pass in a not-so-distant future from being ‘an interesting concept’ to be ‘a need’ in all smartphones.

ABI Research suggests in a recent survey that people are feeling more comfortable using biometric security, which could result in a $3 billion spending increase in biometrics over the next five years. Supporting this prediction, we find cases such as India, which will pass from recognizing their people through their membership to a group, according to their caste, tribe or religion, to identifying all its citizens trough iris recognition. On the other hand, Isabelle Moeller of the Biometrics Institute, considers that ‘Public acceptance of biometrics has been slow to grow, and will continue to be an issue until issues of privacy and security of data have been brought up to a level acceptable by the majority of people’.

Another survey done by Goode Intelligence about mobile biometrics foresees an increase from 4 million mobile biometric users that exist in 2011 to 39 million in 2015. The survey also details how biometrics will work on cellphones, focusing on device protection, e-commerce security, NFC security and replacement of PINs and passwords. According to the survey, fingerprint sensors and voice recognition technology will be the first to appear.

Jose Luis Huertas, CEO at Mobbeel, a company based on the creation of biometric solutions for smartphones,  gives us his opinion about these facts. ‘Every day we perform more transactions with our smartphones and we store more and more both personal and professional private information. Until now, we could only protect that information with a large amount of forgettable passwords. Furthermore, it is difficult to type long and complex passwords with a tiny smartphone keyboard, so we finally preferred to use passwords which are easy to remember and to type in exchange for losing security. Biometrics is the solution to combine security and comfort and soon all of us will have a high level of security without having to remember anything, anytime, anywhere’.