Biometric Update

You might think that a company founded in 1921 would be slow on the uptake of cutting edge information technology. Not so for White Castle. This company has found a recipe for saving millions of dollars a year on processing paperwork for its 12,000 employees, and one of the ingredients is biometrics.

When an employee uses the PC, he types in a user ID to identify himself. Then he presses his fingerprint to a biometrics reader to verify he is who he says he is. Using this process, White Castle can instantaneously authenticate the user to the appropriate applications. He also has the ability to apply an electronic signature to documents.

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The FBI on Tuesday selected Lockheed Martin for a $1 billion contract to build a database for fingerprints and other biometric information.

Lockheed Martin Corp., which built and maintains the FBI’s current 10-fingerprint database, was the expected winner among analysts. Making good on its incumbent status, the nation’s largest defense contractor will keep its hands on the Next Generation Identification system contract.

Lockheed Martin’s Transportation and Security Solutions branch won the one-year deal, which include nine one-year options, the FBI said. Bethesda, Md.-based Lockheed Martin beat out teams led by Northrop Grumman Corp. and International Business Machines Corp.

The deal is a major upgrade to the FBI’s Integrated Automated Fingerprint Identification System because it allows the agency to more easily share anti-terrorism information with domestic and international partners and may include other identifiers, including palm prints, iris scans and facial recognition.

Read more about this deal at Forbes.

Aware, Inc. , a leading supplier of broadband technology and biometrics software, today reported financial results for its fourth quarter ended December 31, 2007.

Revenues for the fourth quarter of 2007 were $6.8 million, an increase of 5% compared to $6.4 million in the same quarter last year. For the year ended December 31, 2007, revenues increased 10% to $26.4 million, compared to $24.1 million for the year ended December 31, 2006.

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With the aim of boosting security in the financial services industry, ISO, the world’s largest developer of international standards, has issued a new biometric standard for financial firms.

Biometrics include technologies such as voice identification —authenticating the identity of a person based on their voice —as well as fingerprinting, iris scanning and facial recognition.

ISO said the proliferation of electronic transactions —and the security risk inherent in these transactions — led the organization to promote biometrics in the financial industry and suggest it become an integral part of a company’s overall information security management program.

“Trillions of dollars in funds and securities are transferred daily on payment and other financial systems through telephone, wire services and other electronic communication mechanisms,” ISO said.

“…The sheer volume and value of such transactions exposes the financial community and its customers to severe risks from accidental or deliberate alteration, substitution or destruction of data. There is therefore a strong need for an ironclad authentication method,” the organization added.

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The White House National Science and Technology Council’s Subcommittee on Biometrics and Identity Management will now allow interagency governmental sharing of biometric identification.

It doesn’t seem like much of a story at first glance, but the Federal government has been working steadily on a government-wide standard for biometrics data capture, storage, and sharing. Currently each agency uses its own methods to collect, store, and utilize biometric data. This disparity in the deployment and use of technology has slowed the government’s efforts to share this data between agencies. The new standardized system would remedy this disparity and would lead to greater efficiencies in data sharing. But creating a standardized system for storing and sharing biometric data across governmental agencies may have a downside as well.

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