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| July 14, 2006
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Dear readers,
The Biometrics Info provides you with the latest news on biometrics, smartcards and network security. We provide you with this free service 2 or 3 times a week depending on the news available.
We provide a RSS feed for daily use. During the week all the news will be available through the RSS feed with a weekly summary on friday through the Biometrics Info e-zine.
We carefully selected the newsarticles for this Biometrics Info and we hope you appreciate this edition.
Enjoy reading.
Reinier M. van der Drift
BioXS
English
ID cards doomed, say officials
TONY BLAIR’S flagship identity cards scheme is set to fail and may not be introduced for a generation, according to leaked Whitehall e-mails from the senior officials responsible for the multi-billion-pound project. The problems are so serious that ministers have been forced to draw up plans for a scaled-down “face-saving” version to meet their pledge of phasing in the cards from 2008.
However, civil servants say there is no evidence that even this compromise is “remotely feasible” and accuse ministers of “ignoring reality” by pressing ahead. One official warns of a “botched operation” that could put back the introduction of ID cards for a generation. He added: “I conclude that we are setting ourselves up to fail.” Another admits he is planning Home Office strategy around the possibility that the scheme could be “canned completely”.
The Sunday Times
Date: 2006-07-09 |
Computer crime not as lucrative Hackers suspected of shifting attention to home machines
Companies and organizations continue to lose money because of virus attacks and other computer network breaches, but the losses have declined due to improved security, according to a report released Thursday. Virus attacks remain the leading cause of network security financial losses, followed by unauthorized access to networks and lost or stolen laptops, according to a survey by the Computer Security Institute together with the FBI's Computer Intrusion Squad. The study, which was based on a survey of 616 U.S. companies and organizations, found that these forms of security breaches accounted for more than 74 percent of their financial losses. But the average loss reported by the organizations in the study has declined by 18 percent to $167,713, the report said. "One thing that is going on here in terms of financial losses is that people are better at containing their losses now," said Robert Richardson, editorial director at the Computer Security Institute.
Fujitsu Introduces New Biometric Security Solution for ATMs in Brazil; Fujitsu PalmSecure(TM) Ideal for Financial Cotrporations Requiring High-level Security
Tokyo, Japan, July 13, 2006 - (JCN Newswire) - Fujitsu do Brasil Ltda. today announced PalmSecure(TM), a new biometric security solution featuring a compact, high-performance sensor that scans palm vein patterns to verify user identification in bank ATM transactions. This pioneering palm vein solution is already being tested internally at Banco Bradesco S.A. ("Bradesco"), the largest private bank in Latin America, with general operation scheduled to start soon.
After researching various biometric technologies, Bradesco chose PalmSecure for its outstanding features, such as high levels of verification accuracy and being non-invasive and hygienic, making it easier to be accepted by customers of the bank.
JCNNetwork
Date: 2006-07-14 |
Review delays start of ID card procurement
Procurement for the multibillion-pound UK national biometric identity card scheme will start only once the current Home Office review is completed.
And an increasing emphasis on the concept of ID management, rather than just the cards themselves, suggests any final scheme could be quite different from the original security-focused plan. When the General Election delayed the enabling legislation by 12 months, the government’s ID cards team said procurement would start as soon as the law was on the statute books. But the tendering process still has not started, despite the bill being passed in March. The plans are now on hold pending completion of the review commissioned by Home Secretary John Reid when he took over from Charles Clarke in May.
ItNews.com.au
Date: 2006-07-14 |
CryptoMetrics Selected by Westchester County, NY for Leading Fingerprint Biometric Authentication Solution
TUCKAHOE, N.Y.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--July 13, 2006--CryptoMetrics(R), Inc. a leading global provider of state-of-the-art biometric solutions to government, aviation security, law enforcement, military, homeland security and commercial markets, today announced that its FingerSURE Enterprise Technology has been selected by Westchester County's Information Technology Group to provide the highest level of secure access to critical county and government data and systems. FingerSURE Enterprise requires users to provide fingerprint authentication to access any workstation connected to the system, while substantially reducing costs associated to password administration and management.
The FingerSURE solution delivered by CryptoMetrics, through integration with other trusted biometric devices, also allows users to be authenticated for physical access to county buildings and facilities. Westchester County is an immediate suburb of New York City, comprised of 43 municipalities and over 980,000 residents.
BusinessWire
Date: 2006-07-14 |
Iris recognition biometrics to be used in Charlotte's sex offender registry
CHARLOTTE, NC - The nation's first system to track sex offenders using Iris Biometric Recognition Technology will be implemented by the Mecklenburg County Sheriff's Office in Charlotte, NC. The web-based Sex Offender Registry & Identification System (SORIS) registers and positively identifies convicted sex offenders using the most mathematically unique biometric - the iris. Iris recognition biometric technology determines the identity of an individual by capturing a high-resolution digital photograph of the individual's iris. The unique features contained in the iris are compared against a database and the identity of the person determined.
Techjournal South
Date: 2006-07-14 |
FBI consultant spared jail in hacking case
WASHINGTON --An FBI computer consultant who pleaded guilty to hacking the secret passwords of Director Robert Mueller and others will not serve any time in prison, a federal judge has ruled.
Joseph Thomas Colon of Springfield, Ill., was sentenced Thursday by U.S. District Judge Richard Leon to six months of home detention and ordered to pay $20,000 in restitution to the FBI.
Colon pleaded guilty in March to four misdemeanor counts of intentionally exceeding his authorized computer access. He faced up to 18 months in prison after he acknowledged using two computer programs available for free on the Internet to extract the information and decode the passwords of Mueller and others.
Boston.com
Date: 2006-07-14 |
Innovation In Hybrid RFID Technologies
While straight-up RFID-based items are starting to become commonplace - things such as smartcards, toll road + parking transponders, biometric devices - there's a new wave of gadgets and devices being produced that combine RFID with other technologies, particularly a variety of sensors. In such hybrid applications, RFID often becomes a component of a communication network and the sensor plays the key role in the device's function.
For example, Japanese researchers are looking into sensors that could be dropped over a disaster area and sense heat or seismic shifts, then communicate data via the RFID components of an array of sensors. The PPIC (Public Policy Institute of California) produced a paper suggesting ways to defend the US border and seaports.
RFID Gazette
Date: 2006-07-14 |
RICOH DEVELOPS COPIER WITH BIOMETRIC AUTHENTICATION FEATURE
(Asia Pulse Businesswire Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) TOKYO, July 12 Asia Pulse - Japan's Ricoh Co. (TSE:7752) has developed a biometric authentication system for its multifunction copiers and plans to utilize this feature to promote greater use of its products in places like banks, hospitals and government agencies where personal information is handled and security is important.
The biometric system is based on the PalmSecure palm-vein authentication device developed by Fujitsu Ltd. (TSE:6702).
Citi begins trial of contactless payments on subway
MasterCard Worldwide, the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, MTA New York City Transit and Citi Cards and Citibank today announced the beginning of a six-month contactless payment trial in select New York City subway stations with pre-selected Citi credit card and Citibank customers.
The goal of the NYC Subway Trial is to evaluate the benefits of contactless payment technology in the busy NYC subway environment. The trial will take place at select Lexington Avenue Line 4, 5, 6 stations, between the 138th Street stations in the Bronx, two stations in Queens, and Borough Hall Station in Brooklyn.
New York Giants running back and quintessential New Yorker, Tiki Barber, was onsite today at the Times Square Shuttle platform in Grand Central station to help launch the trial and to conduct the first ceremonial "Tap & Go" payment.
Citizenship and Immigration Canada Selects Unisys for Biometrics Field Trial
OTTAWA, Canada, July 12, 2006 – Citizenship and Immigration Canada (CIC) has selected Unisys Canada Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Unisys Corp. (NYSE: UIS), to supply, install and support a solution that will allow CIC to conduct a six-month biometrics field trial. The trial will test the impact of introducing two biometric technologies – fingerprint and facial recognition – on CIC operations. The six-month contract is valued at approximately $835,000 USD.
Approximately 15,000 fingerprints and facial images will be collected from field trial participants. Analysis of the information collected will be conducted separately.
Contributions and Workshop on BioSecure Research Agenda
The European Biometrics Community is again being urged to contribute to the BioSecure Research agenda on Biometrics by filling out questionnaires by 21 July. A third questionnaire on Human Factors has now been added. BioSecure would also like to announce a Workshop on the Research Agenda for Biometrical Research, Systems and Applications on 15 September in Vigo, Spain.
Please contribute your opinions to the BioSecure Research Agenda on Biometrics by filling out the below questionnaires by 21 July, 2006.
Looking ahead to life without passwords
Ayaaz Janmohamed and Matthew Todd manage IT operations in two very different environments, but their identity and access management challenges aren't different at all. The urgency of people getting information is such that people put passwords on a sticky note, or several people try to share passwords on one machine, and so accountability is tossed out.
Ayaaz Janmohamed Janmohamed, IT infrastructure manager for the City of Edmonton Police Service in Alberta, Canada, worries that online outlaws could access electronically stored information on suspects, victims and police officers and put everyone's safety at risk. Todd, CISO and VP of risk and technical operations for Palo Alto, Calif.-based Financial Engines Inc., worries that someone with unauthorized access could steal investors' sensitive financial data and use it for identity fraud and other crimes.
Both have invested plenty of time, money and energy to keep these scenarios from ever happening. And along the way, both have determined that passwords are nothing but trouble.
ComputerWeek
Date: 2006-07-11 |
The Holy Grail of RFID-Enabled Consumer Gadgets?
RFID might be great for things like tracking milk crates, solving parking problems for city officials, or keeping an eye on your kids at a busy theme park, but there are countless other applications just waiting for someone to harness them into consumer electronics devices that makes people's lives easier. Here's a very short wishlist of some semi-fictional consumer items/ solutions that I'd like to see, which use RFID and other technologies. Business opportunities abound.
RFID Gazette
Date: 2006-07-14 |
EVO: PHASE ONE LAUNCHES ON OCTOBER 20, 2006 IN NORTH AMERICA
Anniston, Alabama JULY 11, 2006 - Today the Envizions Computer Entertainment Corporation announced that the Evo: Phase One media entertainment console will go on sale via the internet October 20, 2006. The suggested retail price is $679.95. (80 GB HDD) The system will ship with the Akimbo video on demand application pre-installed, plus, customers can apply an additional discount on over 1,600 games from the Evo: Direct store upon purchase of their EVO unit.
Evo: Phase One combines computer, media center, and PC gaming into one unit. The system will also boast amazing graphics supported by the Sapphire RADEON HDMI X1600 Pro graphic card. The Sapphire RADEON X1600 Pro has 12 pixel pipelines that provides the highest graphics performance in its class even for shader intensive gaming; equipped with 128MB of DDR3 memory and this model features clock speeds of 500MHz (core) and 800MHz (memory). Other key features include customized liquid cooling system, built-in biometric fingerprint reader and digital video recording features.
Shacknews
Date: 2006-07-13 |
Biometrics component of new PIV cards a technological journey
It wasn’t too long ago that biometrics seemed like an expensive proposition that would only work in sci-fi movie plots. But today, the technology that measures human physical and behavioral characteristics for authentication has come a long way. And in the United States, millions of federal government employees and contractors will be in touch with the technology soon. That is because federal agencies are required to include fingerprint-based biometric data on the new IDs mandated by HSPD-12.
ContactlessNews
Date: 2006-07-14 |
Deutsch
Match-on-Card-Technologie gewährleistet Vertraulichkeit der biome-trischen Daten
14.07.06) - Sagem Défense Sécurité unterzeichnete einen Vertrag mit der Bundesdruckerei Spaniens (Real Casa de la Moneda, Fabrica Nacional de Moneda y de Timbre - FNMT-RCM) über die Lizenzierung biometrischer Software für Match-on-Cards.
Die auf dem Chip des neuen elektronischen Personalausweises (documento nacional de identidad electronico - DNI-e) installierte Software gleicht die Fingerabdrücke des Besitzers direkt mit den auf dem Chip gespeicherten biometrischen Daten ab. Diese neuartige Technik ermöglicht die Über-prüfung der Identität des Besitzers bei gleichzeitiger Geheimhaltung der persönlichen Daten. Nach umfangreichen Tests hat sich die spanische Polizei für das System von Sagem Défense Sécurité entschieden.
IT-SecCity
Date: 2006-07-13 |
Nederlands
Lachen verboden in nieuwe paspoort
AMSTERDAM - Lachen naar de fotograaf wordt taboe in het nieuwe, biometrisch paspoort dat vanaf 28 augustus in Nederland wordt ingevoerd. De regels voor pasfoto's in het reisdocument zijn veel strenger geworden, blijkt uit de Fotomatrix Model 2006 die door het ministerie van Binnenlandse Zaken is gepubliceerd.
Glimlachen, haren over de oren en spiegelende brillenglazen op de pasfoto worden verboden. Hoofddeksels worden pas toegestaan als de houder ‘aantoont' dat daar een medische, godsdienstige of levenbeschouwelijke reden voor bestaat. Ook met hoofddoek moet de onderkant van de oren zichtbaar zijn. In het huidige paspoort zijn glimlachen en hoofddoeken over de oren nog wel toegestaan.
De strenge eisen zijn ingevoerd vanwege de strakke en uniforme regels voor de foto, die op een chip in het paspoort zelf wordt opgeslagen. Over drie jaar worden daar ook vingerafdrukken aan toegevoegd. Bij twijfel aan iemands identiteit kan voortaan een gelaatsscan of vingerafdruk worden gemaakt.
Volkskrant
Date: 2006-07-14 |
‘Big Brother’ kijkt aan alle kanten mee
Donderdag 13 juli 2006 - DEN HAAG – De laatste jaren raakt de privacy en vooral de bescherming daarvan steeds verder in het nauw. De waakhond voor de bescherming van persoonsgegevens, het CBP, heeft zorgen over enkele grote initiatieven en dossiers. Dat bleek woensdag uit het jaarverslag over 2005.
BN/De Stem
Date: 2006-07-14 |
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