Hands up
Hand-geometry systems take three-dimensional measurements of variables such as finger length, distance between joints, shape of knuckles, and even the pattern of blood vessels beneath the skin.
They have nothing to do with fingerprints, a point that allays many worries about Big Brother. On the other hand (no pun intended), elderly, arthritic and some disabled users may have difficulty laying their hands flat on a scanner.
The measurements are recorded in as few as 9 bytes, enabling storage of many templates on a standalone device. That's good from a cost-per-user standpoint, especially considering hand-geometry readers cost about 10 times more than fingerprint scanners. The 1996 Olympic Games used Recognition Systems (RSI) HandReaders to control access to the Olympic Village. More than 65,000 visitors were enrolled in the system, which processed 1 million transactions in 28 days.
"We sell to two markets via two channels," says Tracy Timmer, support specialist for RSI, an Ingersoll-Rand subsidiary that controls 65 percent of the hand-geometry market.
"Time and attendance [t&A] systems account for 65 percent of our domestic sales," she explains. "There we sell to large partners such as ADT, Chronos and Simplex, who integrate our technology into their T&A systems. They sell direct and through other resellers."
Physical access control, she adds, accounts for the other 35 percent of sales. Here, says Timmer, "things have changed dramatically in the past two years. We now sell through system integrators, as well as through our parent company's direct-sales force."
Internet infrastructure companies are RSI's hottest market these days. "Data centers, server farms, co-location facilities and ASPs all need to visibly show their customers that they take physical security seriously," Timmer notes.
The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (HIPPA) soon may give a further boost to biometricsâ€"and, specifically, to hand geometry. The federal law mandates sweeping regulations of the privacy, security and administration of health-care information; many of these regulations will be finalised by the end of this year.
"Then, hospitals, clinics and doctors' offices will scramble to cope," says Timmer, who naturally views hand recognition as the right way to control who sees which parts of a patient's record.
