Tag: biometrics

Bad day for plane spotters but a great day for maintenance.

All UK airports closed.

 Airports across the UK are saturated with security measures from access control CCTV biometrics and so on. Normally the on going programme of maintenance for all this equipment has to be carefully scheduled to fit in with passengers and staff to ensure that when tested it causes the minimum inconvenience and disruption .

Icelandic volcanic eruption.

 A unique opportunity for security installers arose yesterday and today however when a volcanic eruption in Iceland over 900 miles away from the UK grounded every single aircraft in the country. The situation is not expected to be resolved until at least tomorrow and with this information very well publicized it means that the airports for the first time ever are deserted. What a great chance for security installers to get on site and carry out all those jobs that normally mean either working at night or working around many hundreds of people.

Unique testing opportunity.

It also offers a unique opportunity to carry out testing on analytics in an almost a completely sterile environment. With the runways effectively reduced to parking lots day light testing with no movement has never been able to have been done before and the smart installers will be using this very rare window of oppotunity to carry out some experimentation.

How long have they got?

No one is able to tell for how long the eruption will continue but it seems certain that the combination of  the weather patterns and a local volcanic eruption are highly unlikely to ever occur again. So our advice would be to all installers of CCTV, access control or any kind of security device get on site today and make the most of it!

integrated security system

Integrated security solution

 In the future, high risk buildings and important events will require a radical security solution to ensure any threat and  unauthorised entry is reduced to an absolute minimum. Access control integrated to CCTV and then  linked to biometrics is something we should all be expecting to confront in the future.Registration and submission of personnel data including finger prints prior to attendance will be common place.

It can only be you!

 The whole integrated security solution gives an almost infallible confirmation that the person trying to gain access is indeed exactly who he /she says they are. This will become more and more important to be able to confirm as risks rise. Also however, as the technology gets more advanced and the speed of the system gets faster, this fairly restrictive access control solution actually becomes more palatable to the general public . Especially when at the end of the day it is the general public we are all trying to protect.

Terrorist threat

 It may sound like our liberties are being infringed upon and our patience very severely tested but with terrorists and criminals becoming more and more sophisticated pre -registration to gain access to many buildings and events will inevitably become  pre -requisite in the future. We have to learn to live with this and embrace the integrated security solutions that will hopefully  make all our lives safer.

Biometrics, things are not as bad as they seem!

Are biometric readers the future?

This is a question that has recently been raised in the security community. After all biometrics have been around for a long time now and their impact in the market has been very limited indeed in integrated systems.

To many things to too many people.

For those who have looked closely at the subject the reason for this lack of  market penetration is simple, manufacturers are trying to do too much with the biometric reader. By trying to appeal to everyone and install too much functionality into each device the units have become cumbersome , over engineered and very expensive, literally pricing themselves out of the market.

Why has this happened with biometric readers?

The main reason is speed. To open the door quickly most readers incorporate a card reader or a key- code that must be entered first before the finger is presented, this is so that when the database makes a search for the fingerprint, it already knows where it is looking because the card or code will point the database to where it has to match the fingerprint. Fingerprints are complicated, if you had no card or key-code, a search of the whole database to match the exact print would leave someone standing outside the door for several seconds, hardly ideal.

Ergonomics

So we have slow expensive readers that quite frankly are unreliable and require two elements for them to work, its no wonder that something that has such promise has fallen so far into obscurity. Add to that the fact that many readers just don’t look the part and you even have the architects refusing to specify them in new build situations.

Externally quite frankly they have failed to perform in hostile conditions such as rain or snow and are badly effected by dust and grime.

So where do we go from here to sell the biometric reader?

The answer as far as we see it is integrated access control. The biometric reader needs to provide a more secure solution than the humble fob or card. It will need to look  good, be small and easy to fit to doors in place of existing card readers, be 100% read reliable and most importantly integrate directly into an existing access control system.

Does such a product exist?

We are sure it does but have yet to track it down. The ability for 100% read reliability is pretty much there and by decoding finger prints from an image into simple 1’s and o’s means that this information can be integrated into existing access control systems in the same way that a card or fob is read.  Get the cost to around £800-£950 installed and you have an extremely competitive product with all the benefits that Biometrics have always promised.

Summary

Partnership’s between some of the big suppliers of integrated security in the form of access control and the manufacturers who produce the biometric readers are inevitable. If a producer of the biometric reader can  overcome all of the problems we have highlighted above, incorporate a sleek and ip65 rated design and secure a partnership deal with an access control manufacturer, then the future of the biometric reader is very promising indeed.