Brad and all, and you too Bob & Sheldon if you happen to be looking in...
More COMDEX...
Mouse gives boost to
biometric security
By Jim Kerstetter, PC Week Online
November 12, 1999 3:00 PM ET
Biometric security -- fingerprint-reading keypads,
retina-scanning lasers and the like -- may finally be
ready for the enterprise.
Although biometric vendors showing their wares at
Comdex in Las Vegas showed most of the same
technologies last year -- and the year before that -- this
year, something's different.
First, many corporate IT managers are finally getting
concerned about authenticating their users. Second,
corporate budgets should begin opening up for such
technologies after year 2000 projects are completed.
Third, and possibly the most important, some biometric
developers believe they have hit on a biometric platform
that will be widely accepted: a fingerprint reader in a
mouse.
"There's been so much hype, so much attention,'' said
Kevin Tahan, an analyst at EBI Securities, in La Jolla,
Calif., who has been following biometrics for a little over
four years. "I was so pleased to find the biggest market
research firms making comments that, after Y2K, the
biggest IT push is biometric security."
Who's at the show
At Comdex, two biometric vendors, SafLink Corp., of
Tampa, Fla., and SecuGen Corp., of San Jose, Calif.,
will announce that ING Direct, a Toronto-based home
banking company, is licensing their jointly developed
fingerprint-reading mouse.
The SecuDesktop 1.4 mouse houses a glass fingerprint
reader on its side. The mouse costs a little less than
$100. Volume discounts can bring that down to $70.
ING Direct over the next few weeks will roll out 500 of
the mice to its customers, said Arkadi Kuhlmann,
president and CEO. Kuhlmann said he's curious to see
how customers react to it and overcome problems such
as smudges and coffee spills.
The mouse, he said, is a step in the right direction. "I
like it because of the availability," Kuhlmann said. "It's
probably fairly portable if people need it to be."
Other companies, such as Siemens AG, Motorola
Inc.'s Digital Imaging Division and NEC Corp., are also
working on mouse-based biometric systems. It's not
the ideal solution but the most viable one yet, according
to the companies.
"Our ultimate goal for all our biometric devices is to get
rid of the external device and put it on your PC," said
Lee Moser, business line manager at NEC, in Arlington,
Va. "But we'll evaluate a variety of different external
devices."
To what end? There's still no concrete evidence that the
biometric security market is going to take hold. But
anecdotal evidence is growing. The federal government,
for example, recently allocated $15 million for the
implementation of biometric security.
zdnet.com
steve |
