Liska Biometry has recently received FIPS 201 approval from the US Federal Government for its suite of DCS5000 image capture platforms that use a standardized digital camera. Also, the Company has received FIPS approval for its Facial Recognition Middleware. The suite is also capable of producing International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) compliant portraits. Liska’s FIPS-approved “Middleware for Facial Recognition” works with all of Liska’s camera environments. 

On Thursday May 31, 2007 at 10:00 p.m. the pulse of invited guests and celebrities, generated the first beams of light from Pulse Front and illuminated Toronto’s Harbourfront. Pulse Front: Relational Architecture 12 is the new searchlight piece by acclaimed Mexican-Canadian electronic artist, Rafael Lozano-Hemmer. The groundbreaking installation uses 20 robotic searchlights, 200,000 watts of power and includes displays up to 20 metal sculptures positioned along Toronto’s harbour. Each piece is installed with a biometric sensor. When a participating spectator grabs the handles on the sculpture the sensors convert their pulse into beams of light in the sky, visible up to 15 kilometers away. 

In an effort to alleviate preventable medical errors and insurance fraud, Siemens Medical Solutions announces the general availability of the CardOS Health 2.0 Patient Health Card Solution, a highly portable, secure storage and communication device that provides patient identification, electronic retrieval, storage and display of critical medical and demographic data, and communication functions for healthcare information. About the size of a credit card, Patient Health Cards are chip-embedded, photo identification cards that allow patients to be quickly and accurately identified and authenticated during registration, and provide instant access to key electronic medical record information, including insurance coverage and demographic information. 

Fargo Electronics has received ISO certification that covers the design, manufacture and sale of secure ID card printer/encoders, media (ribbons, films, cards and laminates), software and systems. 

by Andy Williams, Contributing Editor

While some of the more costly elements that could have been forced on states to comply with the Real ID Act haven’t materialized – at least in the proposed rules that have come out of Washington. Still, there is anxiety over the act itself, its cost, and whether states can meet the compliance deadline that’s now less than one year away. One person who helped draft the recommendations for establishment of the Real ID Act believes states should stop worrying about complying and work at developing a partnership with the federal government that would make Real ID execution simpler. 

WidePoint Corporation announced its appointment to the Board of Directors of The Federation for Identity and Cross-Credentialing Systems™ (FiXs), a coalition of government contractors, commercial companies and not-for-profit organizations that are establishing a global secure identity cross-credentialing network. FiXs provides a trusted identity management infrastructure compliant with HSPD-12 and FIPS 201. The FiXs network enables the secure exchange of approved credentials between member organizations and government partners and is modeled after the ATM network, where an individual can use one of any number of bank cards at the ATM of almost any financial institution. 

Hypercom has expanded its 32-bit family of electronic payment terminals to include three EMV and three non-EMV models. The six offer faster transaction processing, a higher-resolution display and a faster modem and join the company’s line of countertop, multi-lane, wireless and portable terminals that have been adopted by banks and retailers.