Microsoft is already taking preorders for its Microsoft Surface Pro 4 Type Cover. The cover is meant to enable keyboard typing and touchpad navigation for Microsoft’s advanced new tablet. It has one other major feature too: A built-in fingerprint scanner. Compatible with the Windows Hello biometric authentication system built into the new Windows 10 OS,…
A South Korean company is promoting a new facial recognition-based door lock aimed at the mass market. FiveGT announced this week that its Ufacekey door lock system has been installed in a residential building in a community in northern Seoul. The system is capable of analyzing tens of thousands of characteristics of a user’s face,…
Lenovo has launched a bunch of new Windows 10 laptops. The Ideapads, comprising the company’s 300, 300s, 500, and 500s series, range widely in technological sophistication and price. As The Verge notes, the array of devices is a little bewildering, with the 300 series laptops marketed as “light and portable machines” and the 500 series…
Apple has been granted a slew of new patents, including inventions related to NFC, the Apple Watch, and Touch ID. The 45 patents were recently published by the US Patent and Trademark Office. For its Apple Watch, the patents were largely design-related, while the NFC invention appears to extend the capabilities of Apple’s NFC technology…
Advances in sensor technology are making it both more prominent and impactful in consumer electronics, according to a new report from Frost & Sullivan. The growth consultancy’s report considers a range of sensor technologies including touch, motion, gesture, pressure, biometric, and even brain sensors. Basically, the report argues that there are a lot of different…
Apple has filed three new patents relating to putting biometric user identification on a remote control. The biometric system depicted is very similar to the current Touch ID fingerprint scanning system on the company’s newest mobile devices. The patents essentially revolve around a process by which a remote control device determines a user’s identity via…
There’s been a considerable amount of excitement about the biometric capabilities of the impending Windows 10 operating system, most notably revolving around Windows Hello, a multimodal user authentication system that adheres to FIDO security standards. The system takes a big step forward in making biometric authentication standard on consumer electronics with its support of fingerprint readers…
Apple has filed a patent application that more or less confirms the rumors that have been swirling about its development of a touchscreen fingerprint scanner. The patent is for a system that acquires fingerprint data from “finger biometric sensing pixels” embedded within a screen. It’s a bit abstract but the most obvious application of the…
ABI Research, a market research firm, has predicted that the enterprise and consumer sectors of the global biometrics market will reach $3.1 billion in revenues this year. The prediction is a product of two of the firm’s market research reports: Digital Authentication and Embedded Security, and Biometric Technologies and Applications. The researchers attribute much of…
ABI Research is predicted major growth in the global biometrics market over the next five years. In a new report, the research firm predicts that the global market will grow at a rate of 29 percent CAGR over the next five years, hitting a value of $28.6 billion USD in 2020. ABI’s researchers believe that…
Alipay is going to use facial recognition to authenticate users for mobile payments, reports IDG’s Michael Kan in a PCWorld article. The announcement came by way of Jack Ma, the CEO of Alipay’s parent company Alibaba, who provided a few details in a speech at the Cebit trade fair in Germany. Ma explained the development…
Microsoft has announced that it’s embracing FIDO standards for the upcoming Windows 10 operating system. Announced in a post by Dustin Ingalls on the Windows blog, the security move will see the OS adhere to FIDO 2.0 specifications. The announcement came last week after the company participated in the United States White House Cybersecurity and…
Owners of new Samsung Smart TVs are being advised to avoid personal conversations near the TVs, according to an article in The Telegraph by Dan Hyde and Victoria Ward. The TV’s voice recognition software could pick up ambient speech and transmit it “to a third party”. The purpose of the TV’s voice recognition software is…
A new study from Javelin Strategy & Research indicates a worrying trend of consumer apathy towards security, and provides some validation for biometric security solutions. The report was sponsored by Nok Nok Labs, one of the found members of the FIDO Alliance biometrics industry regulator. The report offers a number of insights, some less surprising than others.…
ICAP Patent Brokerage is putting the word out that they have some patents available that cover “a biometrics-based credit card fraud prevention system, for use at the point-of-sale”. The patents will be available for bidding until December 4th. It isn’t clear exactly what the system entails, but from ICAP’s description it sounds pretty comprehensive. In…
Norwegian biometrics developer IDEX ASA has found a manufacturer for mass-scale production of its fingerprint sensors. According to a press release, semiconductor producer Amkor will use its “world-class high precision manufacturing capabilities” to manufacture the sensors. The move will enable “competitive commercialization of IDEX’s fingerprint sensor technology”, allowing it to better serve customer on an…
iWallet Corporation has announced that it will be showcasing its products at the upcoming Consumer Electronics Show (CES). The expo will take place in Las Vegas on January 6 though 9, and iWallet will be in the Personal Privacy and Cyber Security Marketplace section. Known for its digitally-enhanced wallets, which offer biometric locking technology, RFID-blocking, and…
Two major US pharmacies have dropped Apple Pay in the last week, according to an article by Paul Ausick in USA Today. Rite Aid Inc. stopped accepting payments from the mobile commerce platform last Thursday, and CVS Health made the same move on Saturday. Both pharmacies have opted instead for a mobile commerce system called CurrentC,…
This week at FindBiometrics the industry news touched on a huge number of identity management applications and a diverse selection for biometrics modalities. From healthcare to finance and from consumer tech to government deployments, the week ending October 25, 2014 was jam packed with biometrics industry news. Staying Safe and Healthy Healthcare and law enforcement…
Last week, Zwipe announced that it and its partner, a little company named MasterCard, have taken on the task of disrupting the payments industry by revealing the world’s first biometric contactless payments card. FindBiometrics president Peter O’Neill had a chance to speak with Zwipe CEO Kim Humborstad about the big news.