Suprema, a developer of fingerprint recognition technology, has announced that their algorithms for matching and extracting fingerprint data has outperformed the other matching algorithms and 23 of the extracting algorithms tested in the Minutiae Interoperability Exchange (MINEX) test performed by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST).

Their matching algorithm yielded a .23% false rate and their extracting yielded a .3% false rate in the testing.

Students wishing to attend the UK under a student visa will soon need biometric identity cards. Fingerprinting is expected to begin this month for students seeking to renew their student visas. More than 50,000 students are expected to be affected. The move is meant to clamp down on fake colleges offering people a way to enter the UK even though they have no intention of pursuing their education there.

“This new route for students will ensure we know exactly who is coming here to study and…will stamp out bogus colleges which facilitate the lawbreakers,” a UK border control official commented.

Read more here.  

Thanks to hospitals implementing biometrics for patient identification purposes, many patients will no longer need to worry about having correct ID cards and health insurance cards at the ready for their hospital visit, according to a Contra Costa Times article.

ValleyCare hospital on the U.S. West Coast is only the third hospital in the county to install such a system where now a health care professional is able to instantly access a patient’s records by simply taking an infrared scan of the vein pattern in their palm.

Officials have confirmed that Bahrain International Airport will install biometric security gates, according to a Gulf Daily News article. The new systems, called ImmSec, were developed by Swedish security technology developer Gunnebo Security Group and include five years of maintenance by Gunnebo’s business partner the Securicore Group. The ImmSec systems will use a smart card and fingerprint scanner as well as contain LCD monitors to scan travelers and luggage that will be installed at four locations in the airport.

The STARCOS 3.3 Passport Edition operating system from the Munich-based Giesecke & Devrient has been awarded the two required quality certificates by the German Federal Office for Information Security (BSI), confirming that it complies with the highest international security standard for passports.

Specially designed security mechanisms ensure that passports and identity cards can remain in use for many years. Added benefits include the speed and flexibility with which the chip can be personalized and its interoperability with a wide range of different card-reader systems.

Due to biometric deadbolts becoming available at the consumer level, home-owners are now able to not worry about losing or forgetting keys while also retaining a high-level of home-security, according to a Chicago Tribune article.

The specific example laid out is the SmartScan deadbolt which operates by taking a sub dermal scan touting technology that is harder to hack than skin surface scanners, requires that the finger scanned be attached to a living human being, and doesn’t require clean or dry hands.

Vianix, a technology development company, has announced that they have entered into a license agreement with ImageWare, a developer of biometric and identification technologies, to provide ImageWare with MASC as a voice standard for ImageWare’s Mediator Voice Biometric and Language Translation products lines.

Vianix was chosen due to the MASC’s capabilities in noise reduction and compression which is necessary for the military and law enforcement applications that ImageWare is intending for the Mediator products. Additionally, testing with MASC for language translation revealed a positive result.  

Since this video was recorded in September, SAFRAN through Sagem Securite purchased Motorola’s AFIS business. Read more here.  

AVISIAN Executive Editor Chris Corum reports from CARTES and talks to executives at Verifone and HID Global about their latest product announcements.  

AuthenTec, a developer of biometric technologies, has announced they will support Windows Biometric Framework, a system designed to work with fingerprint sensors and biometric applications in Windows 7. The steps taken by AuthenTec and Microsoft to get the framework working will help laptops that already have AuthenTec fingerprint sensors installed to work easily with the operating system.