Network Computing is part of the Informa Tech Division of Informa PLC

This site is operated by a business or businesses owned by Informa PLC and all copyright resides with them. Informa PLC's registered office is 5 Howick Place, London SW1P 1WG. Registered in England and Wales. Number 8860726.

Flesh-and-Blood Biometrics: Page 2 of 5

The Particulars

PalmSecure works by bouncing near-infrared light off of a person's palm and reading the response. Since deoxidized hemoglobin absorbs the infrared beam, a map of the veins in the hand is generated, with the veins displayed at a different density than the rest of the hand.

The accuracy rate of PalmSecure, according to Fujitsu, is greater than 99 percent, with a false positive rate of 0.00007 percent and a false negative rate of 0.00004 percent. Those failure numbers seem awfully low, but if they are born out in widespread deployments, they are definitely within the threshold of acceptable behavior.

Integration of PalmSecure is as simple as plugging it in to a USB port and installing some software. Broad deployments, however, will require more work to centralize the authentication database, though standard builds of the software will make the process go more quickly. You must carry the reader with you, but there's an optional stand that lets you scan each user into the system from a uniform distance. The reader is very portable: It's just 1.5" by 1.5" by 1" and weighs less than 2 oz.; the stand is about four times the size of the reader.

Spoofs And Temperature Problems