This past week at findBIOMETRICS we began our month-long celebration of diversity in biometrics. June is Multi-Modal Month, recognizing the various types of biometric recognition, their various strengths and areas of application.
It was a convenient week to begin walking down this thematic road, too. Industry news was very broad in scope, with stories on voter ID and healthcare, to grant beneficiary re-registration in Africa and a new luxury home in San Diego that features biometric access control.
The most popular news story of the week was NEC’s global launch of MAG1C: a range of solutions meant to detect unusual activity by leveraging a large number of information sources including biometric sensors. An acronym that stands for “Multi Agencies, 1 Concert,” MAG1C’s sources include SNS, video and voice, in addition to data from temperature, humidity and scent sensors.
News from the Philippines brought the announcement that any citizen over the age of majority hoping to vote in the next scheduled democratic election (set for May 2016) will need to have her biometrics registered in the national data base. No biometrics will mean no voting. Though the biometric voter registration has been in place for nearly a decade, this is the first time that it has been mandatory.
Speaking of national biometric ID databases, Net1 announced this week that it has recovered the implementation costs incurred when it re-registered grant beneficiaries in South Africa in 1012 and 2013.
During this period Net1 performed around 11 million additional registrations in fulfilling this request for The South African Social Security Agency (SASSA), these falling outside of its normal monthly service fee. SASSA agreed to pay ZAR 275 million in order to cover these costs after this had been verified by an independent party. Net1 announced on Friday that it has received this sum, recovering its additional implementation costs from the massive project.
Healthcare biometric deployments were also in the news this week, with two particular stories standing out. Intel-GE care innovations announced a partnership with Predilytics, bringing big data analysis to home patient monitoring. Meanwhile clinicalRSVP announced that it will be showcasing its fingerprint research subject management solution at this year’s DIA 2014.
In the UK, telecom company Talk Talk announced that it has replaced its paper attendance records with a biometric system. The biometric time and attendance system, courtesy of The Bodet Group, uses networked biometric scanners in order to cut down on wasted administrative time while also improving workforce management and ensuring accurate record keeping.
The remainder of the week’s news had to do with physical access control.
Lumidigm announced that its signature multispectral imaging technology will be showcased by Third Millennium at the upcoming IFSEC International exhibition. The event is to take place June 17 through 19 in London, England.
Anviz Global is also preparing for the conference, with the announcement this week that it has planned to release the M5 biometric access control solution in concert with the event.
ENTERTECH SYSTEMS announced a strategic partnership with wireless smart access control company ProdataKey. As a result, the BioConnect application will now be integrated with ProdataKey’s smartaccess platform. This will allow for easier synchronization between biometric templates and access terminals.
Finally, as part of Multi-Modal Month, our first blog post of June is focusing on the use of biometrics in the X-Men movie franchise. This week we published the first entry in this two part analysis, specifically focusing on the newest film in the series: X-Men: Days of Future Past.
Stay posted to findBIOMETRICS through the coming week as we continue Multi-Modal Month and report on the industry news items that matter most. Be sure to follow us on Twitter to stay up to date with our latest articles.
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