Touchless biometrics from Princeton Identity expanded to support college and university re-opening

Princeton Identity is expanding its portfolio of touchless face and iris biometric technologies for the university market to provide a fast, safe and convenient way to provide high-assurance access to students, staff, and employees.

Many universities and colleges are looking for ways to re-open their campuses safely for the coming school year, the company says in an announcement, and its biometric readers can be used to secure single rooms, buildings, or in campus-wide systems.

“For many students, college is an away game, a real-life obstacle course to run without parental supervision in their transition to adulthood,” Princeton Identity Vice President of Business Development Terry Schulenberg states. “Parents of prospective students assess campuses and staff seeking a safe yet open environment for their young adults. Such an ideal environment challenges administrators to balance the need for an open campus with parental expectations for comprehensive security. Biometric solutions from PI promote security by offering seamless, touchless, high-assurance identity management starting in physical access control. PI solutions extend further to applications that provide logical access into campus applications.”

The company says its technology allows seamless access control to be deployed quickly to campuses.  The system can be initially implemented for building dormitory and athletic facility entrance, and then extended to logical access for library and cafeteria transactions as students get used to using touchless biometrics. Iris biometrics deployed in cafeterias can replace card-swipe systems with a hygienic approach, and work with personal protective equipment. Princeton Identity’s high-throughput biometric readers can process hundreds of entries per hour at athletics facilities, and the company recommends its technology for easy access control to laboratories and materials supplies.

“PI’s biometric readers behave like a card reader so interfacing to your existing access control system is painless. Existing wiring from a card-reader can be re-used for single or dual-factor,” VP of Engineering Sean Singer comments. “Furthermore, the backend software integrates with existing access control systems. Since most schools have names and credentials in place, the new readers can be operational in less than a day. Also, as new students or staff are added to the access control system, those names are synchronized into the system automatically; complete the process with a simple enrollment, and touchless access is up and running.”

Anti-facial recognition advocates called for a day of action against the technology, perhaps ironically, just as COVID-19 was beginning to proliferate across America. Whether such systems would be acceptable to them, as an access control system which replaces existing systems, rather than a surveillance one, is uncertain.

Article Topics

access control  |  biometric readers  |  biometrics  |  contactless biometrics  |  facial recognition  |  iris recognition  |  Princeton Identity