Is Biometrics Finally Ready to Grow Up?
The early history of biometrics technologies proved to be premature on its promises. Now might be time to reconsider and embrace its coming of age as a primetime security solution.
Security integrators and their customers have reason to feel more confident using biometrics technologies alongside traditional security solutions these days.
6. What was the biggest challenge your company faced as you worked to get your sales team educated on how to sell IP-centric solutions?
7. What was the biggest challenge your company faced as you worked to get your technical team educated on how to implement IP-centric solutions?
5 Steps Toward Biometrics Integration
Migrating customers to new technology can be tricky business. Here’s a roadmap for implementing biometrics:
- Leverage installed security infrastructure as much as practical while still supporting access control evolution.
- Minimize or eliminate disruption of the business operations during the migration … do no harm.
- Phase your migration in logical steps that will deliver budget dollars to security directors like a five-course dinner party.
- Improve security validation in the critical areas first and then throughout the system over time.
- Include the future possibility of convergence of logical and physical security needs as part of the end game in your technology migration strategy.
8. What was the biggest challenge your company faced as you had to make IP video product selections to offer to your customers?
9. What was the biggest challenge your company faced as you made IP access control product solutions to offer to your customers?
10. What was the biggest lesson you personally learned about the difference between conventional and the converged (IP-centric) security solution business expectations, and what advice would you offer to our audience?
How would you answer these questions? Asking yourselves some of these questions as it relates to biometric instead of IP technologies may help you discover your next movie star … and my panelists had their own insights to share.
They offered new perspectives into IP-centric technologies and how this impacted companies’ and customers’ view of the world. The bottom line is that they view the newness of technologies as an evolution with strong and adaptive technologies, demonstrating that “natural selection” extends to IP technologies – specifically, biometric access control technologies.
Fingerprint, Facial Recognition Most Mature
When considering this category, look closely at how a particular biometric technology has evolved, improved and dominated the food chain. Let’s focus on two of the fastest growing areas that hold the most promise in the near future: fingerprint and facial-recognition products. Why these two, when there are so many to choose from? Well, this is where the money is.
When Apple chooses a technology, you better start paying attention or get left behind. Plus, facial-recognition principles are based on fundamental facial features that the FBI has been using for 50 years to help identify and catch criminals. Many disguises can be employed, but the geometry between the eyes and nose stays pretty constant even as we age. With one technology, you still need to make contact with a sensor, and the other you don’t. The first is less expensive and the second is more adaptive to the environment. So how do you choose?
In a good security design, you shouldn’t have to choose. You should be able to apply both options to optimize the balance (cost/benefit) ratio for each customer and application. In addition, you must consider the environmental realities of evolution and address technology migration strategies. Let’s face it, we are still fighting our way out of a global economic funk and new green-field opportunities remain limited. However, the past six years have put additional age on existing access control systems. What does this mean to you, your prospects and customers? Opportunities for real convergence channel migration mojo (see sidebar).
The most exciting primetime biometric technology is the merging of video surveillance, facial recognition and access control at a distance with varying lighting conditions. The ability to cost effectively grant access privileges from 10-15 feet away with high reliability and throughput speed makes security more “user friendly” while dramatically improving validated authorized access control. This will change the way we think about biometrics and how to apply it in the future.
This new long-distance biometric technology is your rough-around-the-edges teenager all grown up, with a good job, living on their own, and paying their own cellphone and health insurance bills. Now that is an exciting prospect!
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About the Author
Paul Boucherle, SSI Contributor
Paul C. Boucherle, Certified Protection Professional (CPP) and Certified Sherpa Coach (CSC), is Security Sales & Integration’s “Business Fitness” columnist. A principal of Matterhorn Consulting, he has more than 30 years of diverse security and safety industry experience including UL central station operations, risk-vulnerability assessments, strategic security program design and management of industry convergence challenges. Boucherle has successfully guided top-tier companies in achieving enhanced ROI resulting from improved sales and operational management techniques. He is a charismatic speaker and educator on a wide range of critical topics relating to the security industry of today and an accomplished corporate strategist and marketer whose vision and expertise in business performance have driven notable enterprise growth in the security industry sector.
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