RE: Biometrics

["Vinsik, Steven C" <Steven.Vinsik () unisys com>]

There are a number of banks\credit unions (large and small) that have
either experimented or deployed biometric solutions.  Most of them have
used fingerprint authentication as their biometric of choice.  The tough
part with banks is that often times they do not want the public to know
what types of security they are using to protect their information.  I
know of a number of bank deployments that range from a 200-500 user base
all the way up to 10,000+ biometric users.

DigitalPersona is a decent biometric provider.  One plus they have going
for them is their alliance with Microsoft.  However, they are limited in
their support of multiple biometric devices.  As far as I know, they
only support their own fingerprint reader.  

There are a number of other biometric providers that are worth looking
at.  The ones that come to mind, in order of preference, are: Saflink,
Activcard, Daon, and BNX.  The advantages of going with one of these
systems is that they all support multiple biometrics including multiple
fingerprint technologies and/or card technologies so you can provide
multiple factors for authentication.  

Any solution depends on the particular environment you would be working
in, but I would suggest at least talking to Saflink and Activcard as
they both have a good integration with AD.

Steve

Steve Vinsik, CISSP
Director, Access Control Solutions
Unisys Corp
Steven.vinsik () unisys com
 

-----Original Message-----
From: Trevor Jennings [mailto:tjennings () mytek net] 
Sent: Friday, July 08, 2005 8:17 AM
To: security-basics () securityfocus com
Subject: Biometrics

Hi,  I have a bank customer who wants to roll out a biometric
(fingerprint)
solution in an AD 2003 enviorenment for his branch sites.  His primary
goal
is to reduce password administration and secondary goal is to provide
more
secure authentication.  Does anyone know of any banks that have
implemented
such a solution?  Has anyone had experience with 'digital persona's
product?
Any thoughts on bio-metric vendors, reviews or even ideas about token
based
auth (remember password emimination Is the key).  Thanks!

Trevor Jennings
MyTek Network
Managed Security Services
tjennings () mytek net
972-389-0055