This past week at FindBiometrics we kicked off Mobile Biometrics Month, hosted a webinar on privacy with the IBIA and checked in with the verticals as time quickly counted down to the upcoming festivities in Tampa.
In these final days leading up to Biometrics UnPlugged and the Global Identity Summit in Tampa Florida, we will be focusing on the hot topic of mobile biometrics in the featured articles section. This week being the first of September, we started the examination of mobility in identity management with a primer on the topic.
On Tuesday, we reported on a new study released by Research and Markets detailing the law enforcement biometrics market, singling out Safran, NEC, 3M Cogent and Cross Match Technologies as the key vendors. According to the report, the law enforcement biometrics market is set to grow at a CAGR of 18.2 percent between this year and 2018. Specifically, the report is concerned with technologies that allow for the identification and verification of physiological and behavioral traits. This includes fingerprint, face, DNA, palm print, hand geometry and iris biometrics, as well as invisible factors like keystroke and speech pattern recognition.
In healthcare news, BIO-key International added three new eye care centers to the list of customers it provides with biometric EHR access. With the addition of Eyecare Medical in Portland, ME, Hollingshead Eye Center in Boise, Idaho and I Care San Antonio in Texas, BIO-key now counts a total of 57 eye care centers in the US as customers.
Touching back on the topic of mobile biometrics for a moment, Huawei officially announced the Ascend Mate 7, it’s new flagship smartphone. The Ascend Mate 7 is a milestone in consumer mobile biometrics, distinguishing itself as the first Android smartphone to feature a capacitive touch sensor. Fingerprint Cards AB also revealed this week that the sensor is none other than its FPC1020.
In financial deployment news, Barclays announced this week that it will be rolling out finger vein biometric readers for its corporate clients in 2015. Prior to this introduction of finger vein authentication, the bank successfully implemented a voice biometrics solution for Barclays Wealth and Investment Management clients. The voice system authenticates callers using the company’s phone services, eliminating the need for passwords and security questions.
This week, Delta ID – a biometric authentication company focused on iris recognition – announced that it has closed a $5 million Series A financing round. The funding period was powered by strategic investors including Intel Capital. Delta ID’s patent pending solution, ActiveIRIS, is aimed at mass-market computing devices. According to the company, thanks to the solution’s iris feature extraction and comparison capabilities, ActiveIRIS is ideal for mobile and PC use, optimized for scenarios in which users most often access their devices.
Finally, this week FindBiometrics published an interview with John Mears, director of the International Biometrics and Identification Association. The conversation previews an upcoming IBIA document concerning exit and entry processing over the past several years, the importance of biometrics at the border and the public’s learning curve when it comes to automated systems
Stay tuned to FindBiometrics this coming week as we prepare to bring you coverage of the September identity management events. Be sure to follow us on Twitter so you don’t miss a beat.
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September 7, 2013 – by Peter B. Counter
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