Listen to this articleBelow is our recent interview with Theresa Hernandez, from Imageware:
Q: Could you provide our readers with a brief introduction to your company?
A: Imageware focuses exclusively on using biometrics to identify, verify, and authenticate people based on their true identity, rather than on what keys and codes they have. A pioneer in the field, Imageware was the first multimodal biometric solution provider in history and holds dozens of patents, including some of the most cited patents in the industry.
The open architecture and flexible nature of our solutions make it simple to seamlessly add biometrics to existing workflows for added security without disruption. We are hardware and algorithm agnostic, integrating our products into a wide range of third-party systems for seamless, secure, and intuitive end-to-end solutions. Using your choice of hardware and algorithms to suit your unique requirements, we have solutions to meet your needs, regardless of your specific use case.
Our solutions are designed for the way people think and work, not how computers function. The sleek, intuitive user interfaces save time, training, and money, leading to quick adoption and a better end-user experience. Imageware’s Cloud-based and on-premises solutions provide faster, more accurate identification to better secure communities, data, and assets. In fact, governments, law enforcement agencies, and public and private enterprises worldwide trust us with critical identity solutions which manage millions of identities every day.
Q: Any highlights on your recent announcement?
A: Alutel Mobility offers mobile solutions for scheduling and managing employees, visitors, and mobile fleets, event access and messaging, mustering in the event of emergencies, and more. They bring the power of employee, event and asset management to mobile devices to allow organizations to work wherever they are.
By incorporating facial recognition technology through Imageware’s patented Biometric Engine, they can be assured that only authorized individuals can access their platforms, bringing biometric multi factor authentication (MFA) to their customers. With hacking and ransomware attacks at an all-time high, now more than ever businesses are looking to protect their assets with the power of biometric identification.
Users of Alutel’s mobile solutions will authenticate themselves prior to having physical access to buildings, facilities, and ships or the apps and platforms the apps interface with. This gives businesses in the maritime industry and beyond the identity assurance that only biometrics can offer.
This combined solution verifies users’ identities by leveraging on-device biometric matching. The biometrics on the device are continuously synced with a cloud-based database. This separation between on-device and Cloud-based matching is what enables the critical offline biometric matching capability.
With Imageware’s award-winning Biometric Engine, the photo of an employee or visitor registered in AMS Suite 6.0 will be compared with a live image of the person entering or leaving a facility, granting or denying access according to the permissions previously assigned through the Alutel Mobile application. Likewise, organizations will be able to use this mobile and contactless authentication to mark checkpoints on evacuation routes with the Mustering module.
Q: Can you give us more insights into your offering?
A: The Imageware Biometric Engine is a scalable, agnostic, multi-modal biometric technology platform for identity management, ensuring only valid individuals gain access to controlled areas or obtain secure documents.
Using one or more biometric technology factors the Biometric Engine conducts 1:1 biometric searches to verify an individual’s identity, 1:N searches to identify an individual within a population, and X:N investigative searches against watch lists and black lists. It is agnostic in biometric algorithm and hardware, supporting the largest number of algorithms and devices on the market.
Using two or more biometric types, such as a face and finger, the modalities are processed through different algorithms and the results are merged after programmed logic is applied to the results.
The flexible architecture allows developers to quickly add new peripherals and biometrics without rebuilding their applications, leveraging industry standards such as BIOAPI, EBTS, XML, JSON, and ODBC.
The Biometric Engine was designed to manage populations of any size. Search speed and capacity increase by simply adding COTS hardware. Imageware has been developing proven solutions for secure identities since 1997. We developed the Biometric Engine to enable agencies and private enterprises to verify identities quickly, easily, and efficiently:
- The Biometric Engine provides proof of identity across large-scale populations.
- Our solutions can be integrated into a variety of applications and industries.
Q: What can we expect from your company in the next 6 months? What are your plans?
A: Our most recent product launch, as of September 30, 2021, is our new Law Enforcement 2.0 platform, featuring a brand new, modern UI/UX that allows law enforcement and public safety officers to more quickly and intuitively book and identify subjects, saving them time in the field as well as in training.
Over the next six months we are building out our biometrically enabled self-sovereign identity (SSI) solution. With SSI, individuals own and control their blockchain-verified digital credentials without the need for a centralized identity provider. Up until now, our identities have been centrally managed, but centralized identity can be risky and is out of the owner’s control. Imageware brings biometric certainty to the SSI market. We are entering the Blockchain Based Identity market as the only biometrically-enabled blockchain-based SSI solution provider.
We’re also working on Imageware Credential 2.0, which is an overhaul of our EPI product suite that will completely modernize the PIV card enrollment and creation solution.
Q: What is the best thing about your company that people might not know about?
A: A lot of people don’t realize that Imageware is a pioneer in biometric technology. We were in the industry, leading the way, since the late 1990s. We’ve innovated a lot of unique solutions, some ahead of their time. We installed the first digital law enforcement solution in the U.S. back in 1998 in the city of Los Angeles. We’re also the first company to search on more than one biometric modality. Because we’re a small company, a lot of people don’t know this about us.
True to form, we’re innovating again with our biometrically enabled SSI, which will bring the identification certainty that only biometrics can offer to blockchain-based identity management. This will ensure people not only have complete control over their own identity and personal information, but that they can ensure no one else can access it without their express permission.
