HID Global releases fingerprint reader in AU market

HID Global has introduced a new fingerprint reader to the Australian market, as biometric authentication becomes the fastest-growing segment in the access control market.

HID Global's high-performance iCLASS SE RB25F fingerprint reader is designed to capture fingerprints in less than one second, reducing delays that used to plague traditional biometric solutions.

HID Global says that traditionally, biometrics solutions for access control were often deployed with reduced security thresholds because their imaging technology, which routinely yielded false fingerprint rejections, resulted in long authentication lines at the door.

HID Global's multispectral imaging technology captures images from both the surface and sub-surface of the skin so that all types of fingerprints, from people of any age, can be read quickly and reliably in cold, dry, dirty, wet and other challenging environmental conditions.

This, coupled with trusted liveness detection for spoof prevention, enables the iCLASS SE RB25F reader to provide real-time validation that fingerprints are genuine and belong to a living person who is physically present at the authentication point

Recently, the Australian Law Reform Commission suggested that Australian organisations are increasingly using or at the very least considering biometric solutions, which are now used in ATMs, taxi booking services, online banking, and methadone programmes.

According to HID Global vice president of product marketing, physical access control solutions, Stephen Carney, organisations are facing increasing threats to their security.

To maximise security, the reader includes built-in optical tamper protection, and it supports the Open Supervised Device Protocol (OSDP), as well as HID's Seos technology for multi-layered authentication between the reader and credentials.

"The powerful combination of HID's highly reliable Lumidigm multispectral technology and the reader's robust construction with IP67 and anti-vandal IK09 ratings now enables customers to deploy fingerprint authentication across a wide range of real-life environments," says Carney.

"The reader is also field-configurable over a network, and is designed to ease migration from traditional and existing fingerprint reader solutions.

Security administrators can download the complimentary HID Biometric Manager, an on-premise software tool for configuring and managing one or many iCLASS SE RB25F readers.

Built on a server- and browser-based client architecture, the HID Biometric Manager can enrol users' fingerprints (for both 1:1 verification and 1: N identification modes), assign access rights and conduct many other functions.

The comprehensive tool can also be used to securely log all door events where the readers have been installed and to upgrade readers in the field remotely over a TCP/IP connection.