BIO-key® to Unveil Enterprise Ready Biometric Identity Platform for Smartphones at the Burton Group Catalyst Conference |
WALL, N.J., July 22 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ — BIO-key International, Inc. (OTC Bulletin Board: BKYI), a leader in finger-based biometric identification solutions today announced the company will be unveiling its first ever mobile biometric identification and authentication platform that provides enterprises with the ability to capture and transmit fingerprint biometric data to a secure server for identity and authentication of smartphone, laptop, tablet and desktop users on Wednesday, July 28 , from 6:00 to 9:30PM, in Oracle Corporation’s Hospitality Suite at the Burton Group Catalyst Conference held at the Hilton San Diego Bayfront Hotel and Convention Center, San Diego, CA. |
“We live in a world with 24 by 7 access to information from mobile devices. Application providers and enterprise IT professionals have been struggling with how they can quickly, conveniently and accurately establish the identity of remote users looking to access their sites and applications,” said Mike DePasquale, CEO of BIO-key International. “With the anticipated ubiquity of fingerprint enabled smartphones such as the LG eXpo, the first such smartphone introduced in the US market, enterprise application providers now have a more secure and convenient alternative to passwords for their remote users to establish their identity,” |
BIO-key partners including Oracle, IBM, Computer Associates and Evidian, who have added BIO-key’s biometric identity solution into their offerings, can now provide their enterprise customers a fast, secure and convenient way to assure their users’ identities to access enterprise applications through smartphones. |
According to IDC’s May 2010 Worldwide Mobile Phone Quarterly Tracker report, growth in the smartphone market more than doubled that of the overall mobile phone market in the first quarter this year, stating vendors shipped a total of 54.7 million units in the first quarter of 2010 (1Q10), up 56.7% from the same quarter the year prior. Furthermore, a March 2010 Nielson report predicted that smartphones will become the standard device by the end of 2011, with the number of smartphones in the U.S. exceeding mobile phones. |
“Cell phone manufacturers recognize that passwords and PIN codes are not sufficient to secure a cell phone user’s personal data or provide secure access to company networks and servers. Over 10 million mobile phones have now added fingerprint readers from AuthenTec into manufacturers’ various models to take advantage of the convenient security, personalization and touch control combined with very low solution implementation cost and we see deployments continuing to grow,” said Larry Ciaccia, President of AuthenTec, a leading provider of security, identity management and touch control solutions. |
“Smartphones provide enterprise users with further flexibility to access applications and information from virtually anywhere and at anytime;” commented Rob Baxter, CEO, Validity, Inc, a leading provider of convenient, secure and reliable fingerprint authentication solutions. “BIO-key’s biometric enterprise identification platform ensures quick and secure identification of enterprise users from any device running on any platform without the inconvenience of typing passwords, and giving enterprises the reliability and security to include smartphones as part of their IT solution,” he added. Read more at www.prnewswire.com |
Content + Links + Activity to generate a massive amount of free http://bit.ly/aHC53U organic traffic.
| Google Caffeine and What You Need to Know |
Just last month, Google announced the completion of their new web indexing system called Caffeine. |
| Caffeine provides 50 percent fresher results for web searches than our last index, and it’s the largest collection of web content we’ve offered. Whether it’s a news story, a blog or a forum post, you can now find links to relevant content much sooner after it is published than was possible ever before. |
Links you should visit soon, read and understand so you don’t make the mistake of thinking your SEO strategy is all that and you find your site is lacking the necessary: |
To make sure your site continues to get Google Love, you will want to have a plan to add new CONTENT to your site, continually add LINKS to your site and generate the appropriate amount of ACTIVITY on your site, so as to grow your site’s ranking with the new Google Caffeine algorithm. |
As a company, Google focuses on three key areas: Search, Ads
and Apps. Search is our core technology; ads are our central
business proposition; and apps are the umbrella over our
web-based software that you can access anywhere, any
time. While each of these has a lot of technology under the
hood, the basic tenets for Search, Ads and Apps are very
simple. We’ve created some short videos explaining the
principles behind our core services. For more information or to share your thoughts, visit our Help Forum.
|
Medicity has been the HIE market leader for awhile now. It will be interesting to see what % of market share Verizon can capture with their new offering. | Verizon launches cloud-based HIE |
BASKING RIDGE, NJ – Verizon has announced a new health info exchange initiative, available via the cloud, to enable the sharing of patient information between healthcare systems on incompatible IT platforms. |
The Verizon Health Information Exchange will consolidate clinical patient data from providers and translate it into a standardized format that can be securely accessed over the Web. Participating exchange providers across communities, states and regions will be able to request patient data via a secure online portal, regardless of the IT systems and specific protocols the providers use, enabling them to obtain a more complete view of a patient’s health history, no matter where the data is stored. |
“By breaking down the digital silos within the U.S. healthcare delivery system, the Verizon Health Information Exchange will address many of the interoperability barriers that prevent sharing of clinical data between physicians, clinics, hospitals and payers,” said Kannan Sreedhar, vice president and global managing director, Verizon Connected Health Care Solutions. “Providing secure access to patient data will enable healthcare organizations to make a quantum leap forward in the deployment of IT to meet critical business and patient-care issues.” |
Verizon says the service is well-suited for both large and small healthcare providers. With monthly charges based on a provider’s patient-record volume, subscribers only pay for what they use. In addition, its availability via Verizon’s cloud computing platform will allow healthcare organizations to use their own IT systems, processes and workflows, without large additional capital expenditures. |
The information exchange will also meet stringent federal standards for privacy, including provisions of the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, executives say. It will use strong identity access management controls to provide security for sensitive patient information. Only authorized users will have access to patient clinical data. |
In addition, the platform will comply with the requirements of the Nationwide Health Information Network, a collection of standards, protocols, legal agreements, specifications and services overseen by the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology to support the secure exchange of health information over the Internet. |
To build out the solution, Verizon will leverage the capabilities of several key technology and service providers – MEDfx, MedVirginia and Oracle – to deliver key features of the service including: clinical dashboard , record locator service, cross-enterprise patient index and secure clinical messaging. |
“The ability to dynamically scale technical resources and pay for those used are key benefits of health information exchange platforms hosted in the cloud,” said Lynne A. Dunbrack, program director, IDC Health Insights. “Cloud-based platforms will appeal to small to mid-sized organizations looking to shift technology investment from cap-ex to op-ex and to large regional or statewide initiatives that need to establish connectivity with myriad stakeholders with divergent needs and interoperability requirements.” |
The HIE is the latest in a series of initiatives Verizon has implemented to help accelerate the use of technology in healthcare. In March, Verizon Business launched the Verizon Medical Data Exchange, and last November, the company introduced Verizon Telehealth Collaboration Services. |
Among the clients planning to adopt the new Verizon platform is MedVirginia, a Richmond-based organization that has long focused on initiatives to improve the quality, safety and efficiency of healthcare through IT, including the 2006 launch of MedVirginia Solution, a community-based health information exchange. |
“MedVirginia projects continued growth in the expanding marketplace for health IT,” said Michael Matthews, the organization’s CEO and the chairman of the NHIN Compatibility Committee administered by the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology. “Our current and future needs require enhanced functionality, flexibility, performance and scalability, and the cloud-based Verizon Health Information Exchange meets those requirements.” Read more at www.healthcareitnews.com |
Since Facebook announced that it would be implementing Facebook Credits last year, many app developers have been unhappy about the proposed 30% that it plans to charge for each transaction. Facebook aims to beat PayPal by deploying its own virtual currency in September |
| Social network
giant Facebook unveiled its intention to roll out its virtual currency Facebook
Credits in September in a move to become the default online currency, rivaling
leaders like PayPal. |
| At present,
Facebook Credits is in a beta test. But, according to some sources familiar
with the deal, the company is targeting to deploy its new service to all users
and developers in September. Initially, Facebook
Credits will be aimed at virtual goods, e.g. games, but will eventually let
consumers buy anything, including physical goods. |
| New Facebook
Credits is supposed to provide big opportunities for brands to offer
transactional services on Facebook and throughout the entire web via Facebook
Connect. |
| The launch
of a Facebook currency would mean that the social network company can deploy it
using other services that connect with it via Facebook Connect and the Open
Graph protocol, enabling brands to let consumers use Credits on sites outside
the Facebook platform. |
| Since
Facebook announced that it would be implementing Facebook Credits last year,
many app developers have been unhappy about the proposed 30% that it plans to
charge for each transaction.Read more at ecommerce-journal.com |
How Cloud Computing Is Changing the World |
A major shift in the way companies obtain software and computing capacity is under way as more companies tap into Web-based applications
|
| At first, just a handful of employees at Sanmina-SCI (SANM) began using Google Apps (GOOG) for tasks like e-mail, document creation, and appointment scheduling. Now, just six months later, almost 1,000 employees of the electronics manufacturing company go online to use Google Apps in place of the comparable Microsoft (MSFT) tools. “We have project teams working on a global basis and to help them collaborate effectively, we use Google Apps,” says Manesh Patel, chief information officer of Sanmina-SCI, a company with $10.7 billion in annual revenue. In the next three years, the number of Google Apps users may rise to 10,000, or about 25% of the total, Patel estimates.
|
| San Jose (Calif.)-based Sanmina and Google are at the forefront of a fundamental shift in the way companies obtain software and computing capacity. A host of providers including Amazon (AMZN), Salesforce.com (CRM), IBM (IBM), Oracle (ORCL), and Microsoft are helping corporate clients use the Internet to tap into everything from extra server space to software that helps manage customer relationships. Assigning these computing tasks to some remote location—rather than, say, a desktop computer, handheld machine, or a company’s own servers—is referred to collectively as cloud computing (BusinessWeek, 4/24/08), and it’s catching on across Corporate America.
|
| The term “cloud computing” encompasses many areas of tech, including software as a service, a software distribution method pioneered by Salesforce.com about a decade ago. It also includes newer avenues such as hardware as a service, a way to order storage and server capacity on demand from Amazon and others. What all these cloud computing services have in common, though, is that they’re all delivered over the Internet, on demand, from massive data centers.
|
A Sea Change in Computing |
| Some analysts say cloud computing represents a sea change in the way computing is done in corporations. Merrill Lynch (MER) estimates that within the next five years, the annual global market for cloud computing will surge to $95 billion. In a May 2008 report, Merrill Lynch estimated that 12% of the worldwide software market would go to the cloud in that period.
|
No fingerprint, No claim. biometric testing to prevent and reduce health insurance fraud Florida Health Insurance HMO News |
Florida health insurance HMO contracts have sought help of IT major Biometric Technologies, Inc. to introduce biometric testing for preventing and reducing health insurance frauds in Florida. Biometric technologies have a patented technology, which detects fraudulent healthcare claims. Biometric technologies’ BioClaim software uses biometrics to authenticate a patient’s identity at the point of service.
www.FloridaHealthInsuranceWeb.com |
Furthermore, It also provides an interface to connect the patients’ data and health insurance claims information with HMO claims system. Besides helping in establishing the identity of patient, the technology is proving helpful in preventing insurance frauds. The biometric system authenticates the identity of the individuals before providing medical assistance. In addition, it protects medical records of individuals and prevents any unauthorized access. Currently, BioClaim has been launched with only selected Medicaid providers. |
The Biometric log-in device has replaced the general paper sign in sheet. The biometric device stores the unique finger print data. The finger print log in it proves that the patient had really visited the hospital. The entry also includes date, time and location and this template containing this information is stored in BioClaim central database. The software runs some mandatory processes when a florida health insurance claim is submitted. This system has successfully curbed the instances of phantom billing by the health insurance providers. |
The new BioClaim software follows one rule - “no fingerprint, no claim.” This new biometric system also prevents people from using insurance card of other people. The BioClaim software denies claim if the biometric data doesn’t match. The basic function of the BioClaim software is to identify the patient correctly and in case the patient’s fingerprint isn’t available, it prevents any items from being billed. |
Besides, Florida health insurance HMOs are likely to experience growth in their business as the Human services budget committee has put forth a plan to move 247,671 Medicaid recipients residing across 19 counties in Florida State to HMOs. |
This move is expected to make savings of $28.6 million for the State in the coming year (2011). The total annual savings is expected to be around $100 million in the next few years. The HMOs were primary choice because they are already operating efficiently and have the capacity to serve larger population conveniently. Central Florida counties, which include Osceola, Orange and Seminole, along with Hillsborough, Palm Beach, Miami-Dade, and Pinellas counties are some of the regions, which have benefitted from this shift. Currently, around 1 million Medicaid patients are receiving managed care from HMOs.
|
A unique, cloud-based service used to authenticate OATH-compliant credential form factors without the cost or complexity of an on-premise solution. | Low Cost, Cloud-Based Authentication |
Two-factor authentication combines something you know (such as a username and password) with something you have (a credential such as a card, token, or mobile phone) to verify an identity or to verify a transaction. VeriSign® Identity Protection (VIP) Authentication Service provides the validation for “something you have” in an easy-to-deploy cloud-based offering that balances cost, convenience, and risk. |
VIP Authentication Service
A unique, cloud-based service used to authenticate OATH-compliant credential form factors without the cost or complexity of an on-premise solution. Learn more
|
Pay by Touch raised over $300 million to provide a similar service like this (but) has since BK’d. Maybe this model in Germany will fair better. | German Markets Test ‘Handy’ Technology to Pay Without Cash, Card |
Tension levels at the grocery store checkout tend to rise when customers need extra time because they have no cash and have to pay with a bank card.
This is especially true in Germany where there is almost always a line at the register and customers are generally required to bag their own groceries.
So some German supermarkets are working to remedy this problem by using a fingerprint scanner to verify identity and make electronic payments.
A pilot project at a supermarket in the Rewe chain is under way near Cologne to test the viability of implementing the payment method in all Rewe affiliates in Germany. The comprehensive affiliate biometric payment method, as it is called, has a “handy” advantage, cashier Helga Gerth said.
”Cash can be forgotten, a bank card can be lost, but a finger can’t,” she said. The new payment method is being accepted positively by people of all ages. |
Fingerprint payment systems already are in use in some supermarkets in Germany, but until now only in isolated applications, said Ulrich Binneboessel of the association of German retailers.
“Some 100 markets belonging to the Edeka chain in southern Germany thus far have implemented the payment method,” Binneboessel said.
The fingerprint payment method being tested at the Rewe chain is designed to make cashless and cardless payment possible in participating grocery stores.
Hamburg-based Dermalog, which specializes in biometrics, provides the technology. It officially introduced its system at the computer trade show CeBIT in March to help get the idea of fingerprint payment accepted across Germany.
At Rewe, customers have to register at a terminal in the store by putting one finger from the right hand and one from the left on a scanner and inputting their address and bank account numbers.
“We want to test the technology’s suitability for daily use and its acceptance level among customers,” Rewe spokesman Andreas Kraemer said.
Because only some characteristics of the fingerprint are scanned and converted into an anonymous numeric code, the entire fingerprint cannot be reconstructed. Rewe stores the data in highly secure databases separate from other personal and account data it collects.
“The process is secure,” Kraemer said. “The scanner at the cash register can recognize whether a finger is real or not — it tests the blood circulation in the finger. You can’t use a dummy finger or a fingerprint lifted with sticky tape a la James Bond.” |
However, members of Chaos Computer Club recently did something similar. They took a fingerprint from a glass that a customer had held and copied it. They were then able to use the copy to delude the scanner. Nevertheless, the retailers’ association considers the technology secure.
“There will never be a system that is 100 percent secure,” Binneboessel said. He insists that using a fingerprint payment method is as secure as using a PIN.
Bettina Geyk, spokeswoman for the North Rhine-Westphalia data protection office, said its employees were unsuccessful when they tried to dupe the scanner.
As long as the fingerprint is just an optional payment method, the participants are completely informed and also know that a central database is behind the system, it is legally acceptable, she said.
But the fingerprint is not universally accepted as a payment method. If it were to replace other payment systems, there would be a database with the data of practically all citizens stored in it. This would require a legal framework.
Geyk also noted that central databases pose a problem because they are easier targets for hackers. People who support the biometric system always include the time factor in arguing for the system. |
“On average, paying using a fingerprint takes only seven seconds, paying with a bank card that requires a PIN takes 12 seconds and paying with cash takes 20,” Kraemer said. Three hundred people have been participating in the pilot project since it launched three months ago. They use the payment method regularly.
One tester, a 28-year-old man, said it was “super” and above all else convenient. But his girlfriend dismissed it. “As long as I cannot see through the system and don’t know who can get access to my data, I won’t go along with it,” she said. Read more at www.thejakartaglobe.com |
The government needs an identity framework to achieve a goal that administrations and congress folk have expressed over many decades: to bring intense consultation and debate about government activity beyond the Beltway. The U.S. government has a new take on federated identity, storage and social networks. |
Last Friday was a scramble for government security personnel and
independent privacy advocates, and should also have stood out to
anyone concerned with the growth of online commerce, civic action, and
social networking. The U.S. government’s Office of Management and
Budget, which is the locus of President Obama’s drive toward transparency and open government, popped out three major
initiatives that combine to potentially change the landscape for
online identity and privacy, not only within government but across the
Internet. |
These documents are not long, but the complexity of the policy areas
they address ensure that no blog could cover everything of importance,
nor could a single commentator like me provide a well-rounded view.
I’ll focus on the changes they make to policies that are known to
require change, with a “job well done” pat on the back. In
highlighting gaps and omissions, I’ll deliberately swim around the
shoals that others have loudly pointed to already, focusing instead on
problems that I believe deserve more attention. |
A certificate-backed OpenID system |
The vision presented in the identity strategy
draft could easily take decades to realize. The goal, roughly
speaking, is to improve on the welter of means currently employed to
validate websites and web users, and to give the public enough
confidence to make them comfortable conducting increasing amounts of
business and civic affairs over the Internet. The principles are
recognizably the ones behind OpenID, whose champions have been in protracted discussions with the OMB and other agencies working on
identity.
|
Currently, the average web user relies on browser validation of
certificates — or blasts right past it, given how many web
administrators fail to maintain their certificates — while the server
requires either password authentication or OpenID to authenticate a
user. When OpenID is enabled, the server delegates user authentication
to a set of trusted sites (AOL, Google, etc.) where users create their
IDs. |
The strategy document extends certificates to user authentication. In
a scenario presented by the draft to warm us toward the strategy, a
woman retrieves hospital test results from her cell phone. Both the
hospital and the cell phone offer PKI certificates and the hospital,
in addition, “obtained an Extended Validation Certificate for its
website to enable individuals to indicate that the website has not
been spoofed.” That last dance turn is a little hard to follow. The
draft doesn’t offer such details as who can give a hospital an
Extended Validation Certificate, and how it can protect against
malicious UNICODE-encoded domain names, man-in-the-middle attacks, or
garden-variety breaches of web security. |
Why the OMB is taking on identity and privacy now |
As mentioned earlier, the OMB has invested a lot of time and engaged
in a huge amount of consultation in the development of its identity
strategy. The result is breath-taking in its scope of proposed
activity: setting standards, encouraging private companies to use the
resulting technologies (and even providing financial incentives to do
so), educating the public to their benefits, setting an example by
deploying the technologies across the federal government, and working
with other government bodies across the country and internationally. |
Why expend all this sweat on a program that was being promoted by
various technorati and social networking sites up to now? The
government needs a comprehensive identity framework, clearly, and one
can make a strong argument that the identity framework needs the
government, too. |
The government needs an identity framework to achieve a goal that
administrations and congress folk have expressed over many decades: to
bring intense consultation and debate about government activity beyond
the Beltway. The enormous participation that the administration
witnessed around such issues as the spending of stimulus money,
reported on Recovery.gov,
showed that they can no longer depend on cabbing their insiders to a
meeting in the Senate Office Building on a Monday morning at nine.
They also need the local activist who can’t afford a plane trip to DC
and has just four hours a week to spend on his concern. |
 Health care, the administration’s most controversial undertaking and
its area of biggest accomplishment, cries out for an identity system
so that doctors can make referrals, exchange records, and report
quality measures. The demands of a modern health care system on data
exchange were recently laid out in two interviews on this site, one
with Brian
Behlendorf and another with Arien
Malec, and that dependency extends to securely identifying health
care providers. A PKI-backed, OpenID-like identity system drives the
promise of better and cheaper health care.
Read more at radar.oreilly.com |
|
Register to comment: