Hitachi to launch finger vein biometrics for any camera

Sep 9, 2019 | Luana Pascu

Hitachi to launch finger vein biometrics for any camera

Japanese company Hitachi will showcase its new hand gesture authentication technology in London on September 10, writes Forbes. The biometric technology scans finger vein patterns to authenticate users “simply by raising their hand, […] to their computer,” according to Ravi Ahluwalia, general manager at the Hitachi Security Business Group (EMEA and NA).

Arguing that passwords are the weakest link in an infrastructure and the most common entry point for hackers, Ahluwalia explains “the removal of password entry is key for protecting users and businesses from cyber-attacks,” because users often reuse the same password for multiple accounts. Ahluwalia claims the blood flowing through the finger veins is an extra level of security because it is “an internal biometric,” which is ” significantly more difficult to forge a finger vein pattern compared to other methods.”

The finger vein technology works with any camera with 720p resolution or above on a laptop, webcam, or smartphone, which Forbes argues could mean the end of previous authentication methods such as passwords, fingerprint scanning and facial recognition systems. Finger vein templates are stored with AES-256 encryption and other factors, according to the company.

“If a technical breach of security resulted in the harvesting of the encrypted templates they would be of no use to a bad actor as they would not be able to reverse the encryption,” Ahluwalia says, “even if that was possible, it would result in a data template which would provide no useful information to them and they would still be unable to reverse the process to retrieve the biometric data.”

Hitachi says the technology is in compliance with the ISO/IEC 30107-3 standard for the testing of Presentation Attack Detection. It was already tested in Japan on ATMs from as early as 1997, and it will further be assessed by customers until the end of the year. The software is planned to be available for sale in 2020.

Last month, Hitachi Europe partnered with IT security distributor Alpha Generation Distribution to bring finger vein technology to the UK market.

Paswordless devices are in the cards for the future. Cryptocurrency wallet ZenGo has integrated FaceTec’s biometrics, an innovative keyless security model for its crypto wallet, while OneLogin has just launched passwordless device authentication for Windows PCs without Active Directory.