Biometric Services International (BSI) Receives $138,000 Biometric Workforce and Education Development Grant from Verizon West Virginia

Award to Create Seamless, Student-focused Program in Support of 21st Century Economy Fields of Studies for West Virginia

Morgantown, W.Va. — Biometric Services International (BSI), a leading nonprofit biometric application services company, today announced that it has received a $138,000 education development grant from Verizon West Virginia. BSI will use the grant to develop an online biometric orientation course for the West Virginia Community and Technical College System (WVCTCS) for the 2008 Summer Semester.

B. Keith Fulton, president of Verizon West Virginia, said the grant is part of his company’s continuing commitment to diversify West Virginia’s economy and to help create new career opportunities for West Virginians via the development of student-focused programs targeting specific 21st century fields of study, such as biometrics.

“Verizon has a long history of helping to attract new-economy industries and jobs to our state,” Fulton said. “Biometrics is certainly one industry that has the potential to grow here, but we need a workforce that can enable that growth. Verizon is excited to join Biometric Services International and the West Virginia Community and Technical College System in their efforts to prepare more West Virginians to compete in this 21st century industry.”

According to Valerie Evanoff, CEO of BSI, the online course will be accompanied by instructor-led “train-the-trainer” workshops beginning in the first half of 2008 at locations chosen by the WVCTCS administration. BSI will also work in conjunction with WVCTCS to develop the framework for a future biometric technical training course for students interested in the technical applications of biometrics”.

In discussing the grant, Evanoff explained that because of the industrial and economic shifts West Virginia is experiencing, students are in need of accelerated education in the fields of study that will form the basis for the state’s future economic development.
“Verizon has recognized this need and is providing the financial resources to aid in the development of a biometric workforce in West Virginia at varying levels of education,” said Evanoff. “As West Virginia strengthens its position as a biometrics leader, home to the Department of Defense’s Biometric Fusion Center, the FBI’s Integrated Automated Fingerprint Identification System (IAFIS) data base and our own company, it makes sense that biometrics is one of the key areas of study to be developed.”

About Verizon

Verizon West Virginia, headquartered in Charleston, W.Va., is part of Verizon Communications Inc., a leader in delivering broadband and other wireline and wireless communication innovations to mass market, business, government and wholesale customers. Verizon Wireless operates America’s most reliable wireless network, serving 63.7 million customers nationwide. Verizon’s Wireline operations include Verizon Business, which delivers innovative and seamless business solutions to customers around the world, and Verizon Telecom, which brings customers the benefits of converged communications, information and entertainment services over the nation’s most advanced fiber-optic network. A Dow 30 company, Verizon has a diverse workforce of nearly 238,000 and last year generated consolidated operating revenues of more than $88 billion. For more information, visit http://www.verizon.com.

About Biometric Services International

To reflect its expanded biometric application services, the National Biometric Security Project (NBSP) recently re-established its Test, Research and Data Center under the new name Biometric Services International, LLC (BSI). Located in Morgantown, West Virginia, BSI is a wholly owned, non-profit subsidiary of NBSP and is the only laboratory, exclusively focused on biometrics, to achieve the coveted ISO/IEC 17025:2005 accreditation for testing. BSI’s application and acquisition services have been expanded to address biometric deployment considerations. This includes requirements definition; articulation of program goals and objectives, vulnerability assessments, application impact studies, life-cycle cost analyses and privacy impact assessments just to name a few. BSI can also provide regularly scheduled operational audits in the post-deployment phase to help ensure that a system is operating at peak performance.

Additionally, BSI develops and conducts specialized training courses to educate end users on how to specify, select and operate biometric systems, to provide managers and executives with an overview on biometric technology, and to offer technicians professional training on the installation and operation of biometric applications. Working with universities around the world, BSI also helps to establish viable biometric curricula to fill identified needs.

BSI’s parent company, NBSP, was created to increase national security and personal identity protection by enhancing identity assurance through biometrics. NBSP continues to enhance the biometric acquisition support services it provides to public and private sector clients as it commercializes the concept of anonymous biometric identity recognition.

For more information about NBSP please visit us at: http://www.nationalbiometric.org.