Next generation of biometric passport vetting offered by ImageWare Systems®
25 September, 2007
category: Biometrics, Government
ImageWare Systems® announced an addition to its IWS™ Biometric Passport product family. It’s Biometric Identity Vetting for Passports is a commercial off-the-shelf product that provides passport issuance agencies the capability to conduct biometric passport applicant vetting, fraud screening and enhanced reporting while working within their current system. Some of the enhanced features include: facial recognition search capabilities for identification and verification, biometric cross-referencing of multiple image populations, image quality enhancement and the ability to expand based on specific government requirements.
ImageWare Systems Delivers Next Generation Biometric Passport Vetting Product
SAN DIEGO, — ImageWare® Systems, Inc., a leading developer of identity management solutions, today announced the expansion of its IWS™ Biometric Passport product family to improve passport applicant identity verification and further reduce the potential of identity fraud.
“We are very excited about continuing to deliver innovative biometric identity management solutions in support of border security initiatives,” said Jim Miller, ImageWare’s chairman and CEO. “By leveraging our IWS™ Biometric Engine™ platform, we have been able to create unique offerings to the industry that are cost-effective and offer a wide variety of homeland security solutions to governments worldwide. The Biometric Passport products are utilized as the identity management layer to enhance passport integrity and aids in the detection of passport fraud.”
ImageWare’s Biometric Identity Vetting for Passports is a commercial-off-the-shelf (COTS) product that provides passport issuance agencies the capabilities they need to employ a scalable solution that works with its existing infrastructure. ImageWare’s Biometric Identity Vetting for Passports includes several features that provide enhanced identification and verification capabilities required to support the passport application and issuance process. Enhanced features include:
– Biometric and biographic enrollment, identification and verification
– Exhaustive facial recognition search capabilities for identification (1:N), verification (1:1)
– Biometric 1:N cross referencing of multiple image populations, including people applying for passports and people that have received a passport
– Biometric image quality enhancement & assessment to provide image quality analysis that increases biometric enrollment and identification performance
– Multi-language support
– Administration functionality to easily create, customize and generate reports
– Real-time data mining
– The ability to integrate into existing legacy systems and expand based upon specific governments requirements.
About IWS Biometric Passport Product Family
IWS Biometric Passport family is a suite of products that enable governments issuing biometric passports or utilizing biometrics during the enrollment, adjudication and issuance processes to vet and ensure unique identities. The product family is based on open architecture and supports multi-biometric identity management solutions, enabling vendor neutrality and delivering non-refutable proof of identity. Available as Web-based products, the IWS Biometric Passport family provides a wide range of functions that support the passport lifecycle, including multi-biometric and biographic enrollment (IWS™ Biometric Passport Enrollment), passport applicant identity vetting (IWS Biometric Identity Vetting for Passports), biometric identification and verification, and the support for biometric passport issuance and management (IWS™ Biometric Passport Issuance). Because the products are built on the company’s award-winning IWS Biometric Engine, governments support the entire biometric passport life-cycle – from background checks, to the management of embedded smart chips, through the automated identity verification and processing at border checkpoints. The IWS Biometric Passport product family also includes the company’s IWS Biometric Image Quality Assessment & Enhancement tool (IWS Biometric IQA&E) to assess the quality of a biometric image, and assure the image meet or exceeds the ISO standards for face, fingerprint and iris. This is a critical tool for any highly-secure identity management program.
IWS Biometric IQA&E automatically provides real-time biometric image quality analysis and feedback to improve the overall effectiveness of biometric images thus increasing the biometric verification performance, and maintaining database and image data integrity. IWS Biometric IQA&E provides a complete platform that includes an image enhancement library for biometric types including face, finger and iris.
About IWS Biometric Engine
The IWS Biometric Engine is a biometric identity management platform for multi-biometric searching and matching. It’s multi-biometric enrollment, management and authentication platform allows users to biometrically search and match populations of unlimited sizes for identity confirmation. Searches can be 1:1 (Verification), 1:N (Identification), X:N (Investigative) and N:N (Population Management). IWS Biometric Engine is technology agnostic, enabling users to employ biometric devices and algorithms from virtually any vendor, as well as support the combination of the following biometric types, including: single fingerprint, Livescan fingerprint, 2D face, 3D face, iris, palm scan, finger vein, palm vein, hand geometry, palm, DNA, signature, voice, and retina. The IWS Biometric Engine currently supports more than 120 devices and methods of biometric acquisition and over 90 biometric algorithms.
About ImageWare Systems, Inc
ImageWare Systems, Inc. is a leading developer of identity management solutions, providing biometric, secure credential and law enforcement technologies. Scalable for worldwide deployment, the Company’s biometric product line includes a multi-biometric engine that is hardware and algorithm independent, enabling the enrollment and management of unlimited population sizes. ImageWare’s identification products are used to manage and issue secure credentials including national IDs, passports, driver licenses, smart cards and access control credentials. ImageWare’s digital booking products provide law enforcement with integrated mug shot, fingerprint Livescan and investigative capabilities. ImageWare is headquartered in San Diego, with offices in Washington DC and Canada. For more information visit http://www.iwsinc.com.
