Biometrics and law enforcement, facial recognition and national ID trending this week

Here is a recap of the most popular biometrics industry news that appeared on BiometricUpdate.com this past week.

Facial recognition

The Scottish Professional Football League has asked the government for financial support to introduce facial recognition technology to identify troublemakers in stadiums next season. The goal in implementing the technology, which could cost up to £4m, is to identify those guilty of violence, offensive singing, using pyrotechnics and exhibiting any other prohibited behaviour.

U.S. Customs and Border Protection have started piloting facial recognition technology at John F. Kennedy International Airport to match arriving first-time visa waiver program travelers and returning U.S. citizens with ePassports to help match individuals to their passports. CBP is also conducting additional tests to evaluate new biometric technologies in multiple environments this year.

Fingerprint technology

MorphoTrak will be upgrading the Albuquerque Police Department’s automated fingerprint identification system by converting its traditional on-premise fingerprint identification system to MorphoTrak’s biometric identification solution, MorphoBIS housed in Morpho Cloud. Morpho Cloud is hosted on Microsoft Azure Government, a cloud platform designed to meet FBI CJIS security policy requirements for structural and digital security.

Synaptics demonstrated its under glass technology to BiometricUpdate.com earlier this month at the Consumer Electronics Show. The versatile new fingerprint sensor solution is designed to operate through glass buttons as well as thicker cover glass. This under glass fingerprint solution is deemed to be a significant advancement and a critical next step to putting capacitive fingerprint sensors under the smartphone cover glass.

FlexEnable and ISORG introduced a large area flexible fingerprint sensor on plastic designed for biometric applications. The large label-thin sensing area allows for more information to be collected for higher security and lower false rejection rates and can be applied to almost any surface or even wrapped around objects such as a car steering wheel or a credit card with integrated biometric detection.

NXT-ID demonstrated its electronic wallet product to BiometricUpdate.com earlier this month at the 2016 Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. Designed to protect identity and replace old wallets, the product works by allowing users to swipe and save their payment card profiles into the Wocket product, which are immediately secured with a PIN and biometric voice print technology.

Synaptics announced this week that it is working with Intel and Lenovo on secure enterprise-level fingerprint authentication for the next generation of Lenovo ThinkPad notebooks. Synaptics’ Natural ID area touch fingerprint solution is supported by Intel Authenticate, a hardware-enhanced, multifactor authentication solution that strengthens identity protection on the PC.

Iris recognition

Iris ID has completed a new installation of its iris biometrics technology at CERN, a 21-country European research organization operating the world’s largest particle physics laboratory located outside Geneva, Switzerland. Iris ID installed readers to 25 new security access points to the radiological area of CERN’s Proton Synchrotron accelerator complex, adding to the 55 Iris ID readers that have been in use since 2008 to access the Large Hadron Collider. An additional 20 Iris ID readers will be installed at another CERN accelerator due to re-open in 2019.

The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, Cairo Amman Bank and IrisGuard have introduced EyeCloud, a new project in Jordan that delivers financial assistance to refugees through banking and iris biometric technology based exclusively on UNHCR biometric registration data. With this system, refugees will not have to visit a bank to register or need ATM cards to access assistance.

Iris ID is participating in a U.S. Customs and Border Protection project that is testing biometric solutions to identify certain non-U.S. citizens entering and exiting the country through pedestrian lanes at the Otay Mesa port of entry in Southern California. Iris ID has integrated its Iris ID iCAM D1000 technology with Portugal-based Vision-Box to create the project’s kiosks.

ABC Gates

The Aruba Airport Authority has expanded the Vision-Box passenger processing system at both the arrivals and departures gates of the Queen Beatrix International Airport. The management platform allows operating officers to monitor all ABC eGates through a smartphone, supervising operations and passenger processing, biometric captures, ID document security features and authentication responses, background check results and VISA status.

Naples International Airport has installed SITA’s Automated Border Control Gates to fast track passengers through the airport who are from the European Union and hold a biometric passport. With an average processing time of only 20 seconds, this process enables eligible passengers to use self-service facilities to reduce wait times and optimize passenger flow through the airport.

National ID

In a recent debate in the UK House of Lords examining the use of national ID cards to enhance security, fight terrorism and reduce fraud, Lord Campbell-Savours argued that national identity cards backed by sophisticated biometrics and strong authentication could help combat fraud that costs the UK an estimated £30bn a year.

Banking

Daon has been selected by the National Association of Federal Credit Unions (NAFCU) Services Corporation as its preferred partner for biometric authentication technology. Daon’s IdentityX Platform allows financial institutions to integrate biometrics for their mobile authentication needs, such as face, fingerprint, and voice recognition into existing security schemas.

Wearable technology

Researchers at the new Automotive Wearables Experience laboratory located at the Ford Research and Innovation Center are exploring ways to connect crucial health information to in-vehicle technologies including sponsoring a challenge that encourages employees to submit app concepts that integrate vehicles and wearable devices.

Research vendors

Biometrics: Technologies and Global Markets, authored by BCC Research analyst Srinivasa Rajaram, examines the global and regional markets for biometric technologies and devices and forecasts that the global market for biometric technologies will grow at a 2.7% CAGR between 2015 and 2020.

Article Topics

authentication  |  banking  |  BCC Research  |  biometrics  |  CBP  |  Daon  |  fingerprint sensors  |  Ford Motor Company  |  Iris ID  |  law enforcement  |  MorphoTrak  |  national ID  |  NXT-ID  |  SITA  |  Synaptics  |  UNHCR  |  Vision-Box