ImageWare launches biometric SaaS on AWS cloud, issues Q1 financial results

ImageWare Systems, Inc. announced it will offer its biometric authentication service GoVerifyID as a SaaS solution on the Amazon Web Services (AWS) cloud.

IWS will launch the end-to-end enterprise-ready service with an integration of TransUnion’s IDManager, a fraud detection and authentication identity decisioning solution.

The company said that several of its customers are already in the midst of signing contracts as resellers of the new service.

AWS delivers a series of cloud computing services that comprise its on-demand computing platform.

Having officially joined the AWS Partner Network in March, ImageWare is a member of the AWS Partner Network’s SaaS Program.

ImageWare’s solution provides a complete range of user identity and transaction verification services, including identity-proofing, cloud provisioning, on-device enrollment, fast verification, and seamless integration into existing security workflows.

Companies can integrate the product into almost any existing security solution, as well as select from various types of biometrics, including face, voice or fingerprint, to create a multi-factor authentication solution for identity and transaction verification.

“The first organizations to provide innovative solutions to their customers gain and retain the majority of market share,” said ImageWare Systems CEO Jim Miller. “Biometric authentication secures customer transactions and identities, while protecting organizations from data breaches, lowering security costs, and improving productivity. It’s the greatest disruptive technology on the scene today.”

IWS’ pay-as-you-go, scale-as-you-need SaaS solution enables customers to quickly deploy the solution with no upfront infrastructure setup or ongoing IT maintenance costs.

In other news, ImageWare issued financial results for the first quarter ended March 31, 2016, as well as a corporate update to highlight its progress since its last quarterly update on March 16, 2016.

The company’s total revenues in Q1 2016 were essentially unchanged at $1.0 million compared to Q1 2015.

IWS experienced an increase in services revenue due to the completion of certain identity management projects, which effectively offset a reduction of software revenue from identification projects.

The gross margin in Q1 2016 was 73.3% compared to 71.1% in Q1 2015, an increase the company mostly attributes to the relatively lower cost of sales associated with the increase in service revenues.

Additionally, the net loss in Q1 2016 was essentially flat compared to the same year-ago quarter at $2.3 million.

The Q1 2016 cash and cash equivalents totaled $1.1 million compared to $3.4 million at December 31, 2015.

IWS continues to operate with no debt and has full availability on its $5.5 million line of credit.

Finally, ImageWare Systems published a newsletter entitled “Mobile Biometric User Authentication as a Service, Solving your Password Problems with Multi-Modal Biometrics”, which features research from Gartner.

The newsletter is designed to help IT and business executives grasp the understanding of the user authentication market by describing how mobile biometric user authentication will improve businesses by safeguarding customer security, protecting brand equity and adding to their bottom lines.

The report highlights several key themes including the common occurrence of major data, resulting in a high risk of identity theft and financial loss; authentication being a key requirement for securing today’s enterprise, in light of passwords being insecure; and the user authentication market spanning an increasingly wide range of technologies and vendors, driven by mobile and cloud.

Earlier this week, ImageWare Systems announced it was granted three U.S. patents for technology used in its multimodal biometric platform, IWS Biometric Engine, which brings the company’s total number of patents to 19.

Article Topics

biometric authentication  |  biometrics  |  cloud computing  |  facial recognition  |  fingerprint biometrics  |  identity verification  |  ImageWare  |  multifactor authentication  |  SaaS  |  secure transactions  |  voice recognition