Florida’s Orange County Deploys BIO-key Tech to Secure Elections Process

BIO-key is once again providing biometric technology to help secure the elections process in the state of Florida. This time around, the Supervisor of Elections in Florida’s Orange County will be using biometric authentication for any employees that need to gain access to sensitive voter data and election files.

Orange County is the fifth largest county in the state, as well as the fifth to turn to BIO-key to protect its elections. BIO-key first provided authentication support for Brevard County and Collier County back in 2018, before adding two more counties to its client roster in September.

In Orange County, BIO-key will be outfitting election staff with its PIV-Pro and EcoID fingerprint scanners for employee enrollment, as well as the ID Director biometric software platform. The PIV-Pro was developed for government applications and is compliant with the FIPS standard, while the EcoID is a compact scanner geared towards the enterprise. The EcoID is compatible with the Windows Hello for Business platform.

“We have come to understand the unique use case for Supervisors of Elections and have tailored solutions to meet their needs,” said BIO-key Chairman and CEO Mike DePasquale. “Now with five successful Supervisor of Election deployments, we have forged an election security program that we believe will become a model for election boards across the country.”

BIO-key notes that biometric tech is particularly useful in election offices, which often utilize shared workstations and have fluctuating staff counts depending on the time of year. Fingerprint authentication enables fast logins without compromising the organization’s security, all while creating an auditable trail of user activity.

The legislative branch of the Federal Government is already using the EcoID scanner to secure the Windows workstations of civic employees. Meanwhile, BIO-key has also opened a new African subsidiary in Nigeria in an effort to capture a portion of that region’s emerging biometric market.

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December 17, 2019 – by Eric Weiss