Grant quoted about online voting in this story.
Copyright 2000 Financial Post DataGroup,A division of The National Post Company
All rights reserved.
National Post
(formerly The Financial Post)
November 16, 2000 Thursday NATIONAL EDITIONS
SECTION: FINANCIAL POST; Pg. C06, Comdex
LENGTH: 478 words
HEADLINE: Biometrics players gear up for demand surge: 'Tip of the iceberg': Mobile computing casts
spotlight on security
BYLINE: Simon Avery;savery@nationalpost.com
DATELINE: LAS VEGAS
BODY:
LAS VEGAS - The time has come to give computers more intimate knowledge of the people that use them,
say representatives of the biometrics industry, which has a huge presence here at the Comdex computer
show.
Showcasing recognition systems that rely on human traits such as voice, facial features, fingerprints,
retinas and even the way we tap a keyboard, a long list of biometrics players are seeking to make
passwords obsolete.
'I don't think we have even begun to touch the tip of the iceberg with this technology,' said Gordon Ross,
chief executive and president of Net Nanny Software Inc.
The Vancouver-based firm is preparing to ship next month software called BioPassword it first
demonstrated here a year ago.
The technology uses a mathematical algorithm to identify a user through his unique typing speed and
rhythm. The benefit of this kind of biometric security is that it does not require expensive support
hardware and it avoids sensitive privacy issues about storing unique personal data, said Mitch Tarr,
vice-president of strategic alliances.
While tech firms have been trying to push biometrics on the business and consumer markets for years, the
industry believes a number of events are finally preparing both markets for large-scale adoption of
biometric identification and security systems.
Notebooks, personal digital assistants and other mobile computing devices will soon outsell PCs, moving
personal information such as banking and trading accounts off the desktop and into more vulnerable
public spaces.
Large organizations will increasingly store private data, such as medical details, on networks of remote
servers. Firms also are beginning a shift to a new model of Web hosted applications, where sensitive data
is accessible from many points.
Even the recent mayhem around the U.S. elections is an opportunity for the biometric community, some
say. 'I'm sure there will be a lot of biometrics companies beating a path to the door of the electoral
commission,' said Barry Hatfield, a vice-president of Quantrad Corp., a Madison, Wis.-based firm
specializing in fingerprint biometrics.
Grant Evans, executive vice-president of Indentix Inc., a finger biometrics firm in Sunnyvale, Calif., says
the technology exists today to have every voter cast his or her ballot electronically, using biometric finger
scans to prevent fraud.
Indentix announced this week that it has signed up Toshiba, in addition to earlier deals with Compaq and
Dell, to install its fingerprint scanner and software on some PCs. Identix also is working with Motorola to
install a similar device in mobile phones.
Germany-based D.C.S. AG sells biometric software to European and Asian governments and enterprises
and has just opened a U.S. sales office. The software identifies users through a combination of face, voice
and lip movement recognition.
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