Orange County joins Florida elections boards using BIO-key fingerprint biometric to authenticate staff

The County Supervisor of Elections for Orange County, Florida has selected biometric technology from BIO-key to provide strong security for staff access to public election data, the company has announced.

Orange County, the state’s fifth largest, will use BIO-key ID Director solution to secure access to voter data and files, enrolling staff members with BIO-key’s FIPS-compliant PIV Pro government fingerprint scanner, and EcoID compact enterprise fingerprint scanner. The latter has been tested and qualified for Microsoft’s biometric authentication in Windows Hello for Business.

A broad range of personnel staff election offices, including full and part-time employees and volunteers, often using shared workstations, according to the announcement. This environment, and the influx of new staff members during election cycles, requires a nimble yet secure authentication solution that provides a clear audit trail of user access, BIO-key says. The company says the affordability, ease of deployment and management, and high level of data security makes its biometric security platform ideal for election applications.

“We are gratified by the growing adoption of our biometric solutions among various County Supervisors of Elections, as they take steps to secure their election systems for the coming presidential election,” stated Mike DePasquale, chairman and CEO, BIO-key. “We have come to understand the unique use case for Supervisors of Elections and have tailored solutions to meet their needs. Our software is sold on a monthly subscription basis and therefore provides needed flexibility to adapt to a changing workforce. We have also developed high-quality, affordably-priced fingerprint scanners to meet budgetary requirements. Now with five successful Supervisor of Election deployments, we have forged an election security program that truly is seamless, easy to launch, and that we believe will become a model for other election Supervisors in Florida and for election boards across the country.”

The company hinted at its successes signing up county election boards in the state in September.

While BIO-key Africa Managing Director Dr. Maduawuchi “Steve” Uwazie did not specifically mention election applications in a recent email exchange with Biometric Update, he did note government projects, and civil ID in particular, as key early target areas for the new subsidiary.

Article Topics

access management  |  BIO-key  |  biometrics  |  elections  |  fingerprint technology  |  identity verification