Precise Biometrics has been awarded an order to supply 50,000 licenses of Precise Match-on-Card™ for an employee ID card program to one of the largest Police Departments in the USA. Precise Biometrics supplies the technology to enable the Police Department to prove their employees’ identities in a fast, secure and reliable way. The project will run during 2008 and 2009, and may result in additional hardware orders. Swedish company Precise Biometrics has more than 12 million deployed card licenses and close to 80 million contracted licenses for its Match-on-Card technology.  

M2SYS Technology has finalized an agreement with DAXKO, a provider of operations software and services to the YMCA market. Through its partnership with M2SYS, DAXKO will offer the Bio-SnapON™ fingerprint software solution as an add-on to its DAXKO Operations software application. Bio-SnapON™ enables companies like DAXKO to rapidly add a fingerprint recognition component to their existing applications with no development work. “Reliable membership identification has always been an area of concern for the YMCA and we recognized the need for a secure identification solution that could be added to our membership management software,” says April Benetollo, VP of Sales and Marketing for DAXKO.  

The “CSI” of the Republic of Korea, the National Institute of Scientific Investigation (NISI), has purchased Animetrics’ Forensica™ and Animetrics90 FaceWatch facial recognition biometric products. NISI’s research and development group initiated a project to explore Animetrics 2D to 3D technology and capabilities for both face recognition biometrics and for face creation and computer visualization applications. “The potential use for police agencies that find and attempt to identify suspects would be a giant step forward in the investigation process,” said NISI lead forensic scientist, Dr. J. Lee. Animetrics is headquartered in Conway, N.H.  

The Albanian government has chosen French company Sagem Securite to produce new biometric passports and identity cards for Albania. Paris-based Sagem Securite will start producing them within the next six months. The company was chosen from among seven companies bidding in an international tender. No new ID cards have been produced for Albanians since the fall of communism in 1990 because of problems with the country’s civil registry.  

Noortech has been awarded a new physical security project by Saudi Customs. Luberef awards Noortech a contract to supply time attendance and access control systems. The project expects completion in two weeks and is located at one of Saudi Customs’ facilities in Riyadh. In addition to the Saudi Customs, Noortech is being retained by a growing number of government and private sector bodies to cater to their physical security systems needs.  

After successful implementation of its software as a service model at a California dentist college last year, SmartCentric Technologies is rolling out its hosted service offering, which gives customers access to all of the company’s smart card applications while reducing their investment in local infrastructure and hardware. The software is located offsite at a central hosted location and the software is accessed over the web using a secure connection. Card offices are now able to chose from any or all of the SmartCity Suite of applications including logical or physical access, Password Wallet, ePurse, and more. Biometrics can even be added for greater security.

Catcher Holdings, headquartered in Portland, Ore., has received an initial contract from a major defense and information technology contractor for the U.S. Department of Defense. Under the purchase agreement CATCHER Rhino hardened mobile computing and communications platforms will be deployed by U.S. military forces in Iraq and Afghanistan for force protection applications.

The initial contract calls for the delivery of 12 Rhino devices. The product is a ruggedized mobile computer with integrated GPS, voice, data, biometric and a suite of communications technologies. Features include two video cameras with digital watermarking capabilities, biometric sensors including a fingerprint scanner an optional iris-scanning camera and a digital voice recorder.  

The Orlando Sentinel reports that Sequiam Corporation has declared bankruptcy and is attempting to fend off an attempted takeover. The Orlando-based maker of biometric fingerprint identification devices cited accumulated losses of more than $30.5 million, existing debt of more than $10.5 million and assets of $2.57 million, in its filing for Chapter 11 reorganization last week. Sequiam blamed its ills largely on its lead financier – New York-based Biometric Investors LLC – which Sequiam accused of defaulting on promised financing. However, Biometrics Investors has announced plans to become the lead financier of Sequiam’s rival, bioMETRX. The move would involve the takeover of Sequiam, according to Biometric Investors, which cited its $8.5 million secured investment in Sequiam’s assets.  

Privaris, a provider of personal, wireless identity verification solutions, and OSI Security Devices, Inc., a provider of standalone and integrated smart reader locking hardware, are partnering to provide organizations with an end-to-end wireless access control and identity verification solution. Disrupting the access control market, OSI Wireless Access Management Systems (WAMS) and Privaris’ plusID have become interoperable to offer customers a secure, wireless biometric solution that can supposedly be implemented overnight at a fraction of the installation and maintenance costs of traditional access control solutions.

Priva Technologies, Inc. has been approved by the Transportation Security Administration as a service provider for its Registered Traveler program. “Our Cleared Security Platform was designed to be the most powerful and efficient credentialing and authentication technology available today, making it ideal for airport security screening,” according to Jeff Minushkin, Priva’s chairman and CEO. “It can significantly speed up security checks at airports for travelers who qualify for the program at the same time making the security checks themselves more robust than is possible with any other existing technology.”