Btt July/August 2000 •• 3
selected as a first tier subcontractor to KPMGConsulting and as a second tier subcontractor toLitton PRC and Logicon.
The same three prime contractors also specifiedtechnology from Visionics (Btt June ’00, p4), eitherdirectly or through Identix or Saflink. EDS will alsoconsider Visionic’s face recognition technology.
Biometric solutions to be used in the programmemust comply with the BioAPI standard.Contact: Mickey Femino at GSA,Tel: +1 202 501 1619
Healthcare/smart cards/fingerprint
Parkinson’s disease smartcard project ready to roll out
A healthcare scheme in the Netherlandsdesigned for patients suffering from Parkinson’sdisease is about to issue its first batch of speciallymodified smart cards.
An initial deployment of up to 200 cards willbe distributed at the end of July, and each will con-tain an on-card fingerprint sensor to identify theowners biometrically.
FingerTIP sensors are being supplied byInfineon Technologies (Btt June ’00, p8) and arebeing integrated into the modified smart cards byNovacard Information System in Germany.Healthcare Systems Benelus (Btt June ’99, p5) isproviding the software for the scheme, which isbeing sponsored and run by health insurer Zorgen Zekerheid (Btt June ’99, p5).
The main motivation for the use of the cards isto speed up and guarantee the accurate transferof information between practitioners.
Ralf Kleffner, sales director at Novacard, told Btt:“Zorg en Zekerheid wanted to give patients asmart card, with their health history stored onthe chip for added security. Unfortunately patientswith Parkinson’s disease were not able to enterthe necessary PIN code to unlock the information,so the insurer decided to look at biometrics as anoption. At first it was decided to put fingerprintreaders at doctor’s surgeries, but this idea was dis-missed due to perceived contamination risks. Theoutcome was a decision to issue each patient asmart card with a built-in sensor.”
This type of smart card technology is not yet per-fected and integration of the sensor into the cardrequired Novacard to make some interestingdesign modifications. The card is thicker at one
end (1.2 mm) than the other (0.81 mm) to take intoaccount the thickness of the sensor.
The card has two chips at the thinner (ISO stan-dard thickness) end of the card – one of these isto store the health information, the other acts asa contact point for the sensor information to bepassed to the reader for matching to take place.
According to Kleffner: “The chip’s controllermodule only has 16 Kbytes of EEPROM, so match-ing has to take place outside of the chip. By theend of the year we want to connect the fingerprintsensor directly to the controller to give an evenhigher security solution.”
Novacard told Btt that it also hopes to producea card of uniform thickness. Infineon has toldNovacard it is attempting to produce a sensorbetween 0.4-0.5 mm thick. This would make thecard attractive for more than just healthcare appli-cations, with the financial and access control sec-tors as ideal targets.
Sensor supply problems have plagued the pro-ject until recently, but the companies anticipate thatby the end of the year up to 1,000 cards will havebeen rolled out. Zorg en Zekerheid will then assessthe performance of the cards and could decide toexpand the use of the card to the rest of its cus-tomer base, which would mean the issuance ofover one million cards. Each card reportedly costsin the region of US$50.Contact: Ralf Kleffner at Novacard,Tel: +49 44 1920 6815, Fax: +49 44 1920 6888,email: [email protected]
Immigration/iris
Frankfurt airport evaluatesiris recognition technology
Frankfurt Airport (Btt November ’96, p12) inGermany has become the first European airportto trial an iris recognition-based solution to restrictemployee access to sensitive areas.
The EyePass solution is provided by US-basedEyeTicket Corporation (formerly SpringTechnologies) and will involve five access controlstations at the airport’s IT Operations Centre.
Airport director Johannes Endler commented:“We are excited about being the first facility (inEurope) to test this product and are optimistic itwill meet our requirements.”
Although each airport installation has to be tail-or-made, this installation has many similarities to
News
Parkinson pilotcharacteristics• Project is still in design and
development phase
• The patients must beinsured at ZZoorrgg eenn ZZeekkeerrhheeiiddand treated for Parkinson’sdisease
• Participation is voluntary
• After the pilot the card willbe developed for otherdiseases
• Project participants at startwill be 200-300 growing to800-1000
• Two outpatient’sdepartments and up to 150pharmacists will be involved
• The cardholders will beissued with a portable cardreader the size of a personalorganiser
the world’s first scheme installed at Charlotte/Douglas International Airport in North Carolinaearlier this year (Btt February ’00, p2), such as the ownership of the system and the enrolmentprocedure.
Enrolment to the system involves acquiring adigital image of the employee’s eye. These char-acteristics are assigned a unique, 512 byte code.From then on the employee need only glanceinto the camera to allow the recognition processto take place. Identification takes between oneand two seconds, EyeTicket claims.
Enrolment at Frankfurt will begin in the middleof July with the operation expected to kick off on1 August. The airport has not yet released detailsof which employees or how many it will enrol intothe scheme.
The hardware, software and the supportingnetwork will be owned, operated and maintainedby EyeTicket Corporation. This will allowFrankfurt Airport to take advantage of technol-ogy advances without having to purchase expen-sive new hardware. The airport will maintain itsown database of enrolled personnel, however,for security reasons.
Frankfurt airport has not paid to have thesystem installed because it is just evaluating thesystem. But further down the line, EyeTickethopes this will change, if the airport decides touse the technology further.
According to a spokesperson at EyeTicketCorporation, major revenues for the companywill begin through its EyeTicket passenger check-in and boarding service. Announcements forthis product are expected soon, the companyclaims.Contact: Catherine Kaliniak at EyeTicket Corporation,Tel: +1 703 827 5700, Fax: +1 703 827 5705,email: [email protected]
Keystroke dynamics
Biometrics set to tacklewould-be music pirates
Biometrics may provide a new line of defencein the fight against music piracy if a new prod-uct to prevent unauthorised access to songs down-loaded from the internet proves successful.
Sales of on-line music are growing rapidly andaccording to Market Tracking International,could reach US$3.9 billion by 2004.
Against this background, keystroke dynamicsspecialist Net Nanny Software International (BttFebruary ’00, p10) and Musicrypt.com haveannounced a partnership that will lead to therelease of a digital rights management (DRM)solution incorporating biometric technology.
According to the suppliers, the problem withissuing listeners with passwords is that they couldbuy a song on-line and then share the passwordwith all their friends. There are also problemsassociated with other DRM systems, which tendto use the serial number of a person’s PC to lockand unlock encrypted music. This solution, arguethe suppliers, effectively ties down the locationthat a user can listen to music they have paid for.
Net Nanny’s BioPassword technology will beused to identify individuals by the dynamic waythey tap a password and username into theircomputer. This means that the user is the keyand that they can listen to music at any PC theylike - as long as it has Net Nanny’s sharewareinstalled. The system would allow payment formusic track by track.
According to John Heaven, president and CEOof Musicrypt.com: “The biometric verification ofthe user using this technology is less severe thanother biometrics, such as iris scanning or finger-printing, and it is still 98% accurate.”
This extremely high profile application hasdrawn interest from analysts worldwide. Somehave criticised the solution, questioning whetherusers would ever accept such a technology, sayingit can at best have zero value to the customer.
Responding to these criticisms a Net Nannyspokesperson told Btt: “This solution is designedto protect the copyright of artists. The use of thisproduct could actually save people money. Forexample, we may decide to give people a dis-count if they sign up to use the scheme.”
Other analysts believe that in the future digitalmusic will be predominantly played on phones,MP3 players and handheld devices, not on PCs.Heaven doesn’t see a problem with this, however.“We can allow the downloading of music toportable devices, but in that instance they wouldbe locked down to that device via its serial number.”
For its part in the venture, Net Nanny willacquire one million common shares ofMusicrypt.com with a deemed value of US$1 pershare, plus a licensing fee.Contact: Steve McLean at Net Nanny Software International,Tel: +1 425 688 3008, Fax: +1 425 688 3010
News
4 • Btt July/August 2000
Net Nanny links up withIBM in internet dealNNeett NNaannnnyy SSooffttwwaarreeIInntteerrnnaattiioonnaall has announced asales and marketing alliancewith IIBBMM to create an on-linecommunity designed to givefamilies and businesses safetyand privacy when they areusing the internet.
The Net Nanny SecurityPractice would integrate IBM,LLoottuuss and TTiivvoollii e-businesssoftware, IBM hardware, NetNanny’s filtering software andBioPassword, Net Nanny’skeystroke dynamicstechnology. The deal will alsosee IBM promoting NetNanny’s integrated biometricand security solutions.Contact: Nika Herford at Net Nanny,Tel: +1 425 688 3008, Fax: +1 425688 3010,email: [email protected]
