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Colombia Leads The Way Again-Biometrics

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20051011.wbiome1011/BNStory/specialScienceandHealth/?query=colombia

North America not ready to let fingers do the talking
By JAMES HANNAH
Tuesday, October 11, 2005 Posted at 11:14 AM EDT-Associated Press

They walk up to an ABM and press their thumbs on the screen. Out spits the cash.
New York? No. Chicago? No. The mountains and jungles of Colombia.
It's one of the few places in the world where banks are using fingerprint biometrics, which verify people's identities based on their unique physical characteristics.
Scanning fingerprints or irises to verify the identity of an automated banking machine customer has yet to penetrate the North American banking market because of concerns about expense and privacy.
Customers must be convinced that the technologies provide more benefit than the card-and-PIN system, which works well, said John Hall, spokesman for the American Bankers Association. The cards also serve functions beyond the ABMs — as debit cards and as advertising for the banks.
"Getting that wallet space is important," said Bill Spence, a biometric expert with Recognition Systems Inc. of Campbell, Calif.
Companies that make ABMs have found budding markets for the fingerprint technology in South America, where citizens are accustomed to the use of fingerprints for general identification, such as ID cards they carry.
Diebold Inc. has supplied fingerprint-capable machines to a bank in Chile for a pilot project. Last year NCR Corp. installed 400 in Colombia.
BanCafe, Colombia's fifth-largest bank, bought the ABMs at the end of 2002 for added security for coffee growers and to get them to open accounts. The growers would not need to carry cards, which can be a lure for thieves.
Ricardo Prieto, vice-president for system operations at BanCafe when the system was installed, said that at first the machines failed to recognize fingerprints on the well-worn hands of some elderly customers and labourers such as construction workers.
He said the ABM imaging was improved, and the number of customers whose fingerprints could not be read fell to 8 per cent from 30 per cent.
About 230,000 of BanCafe's 1 million customers registered to use the fingerprint ABMs, which account for about 15 per cent of the bank's total transactions.
"Biometrics is certainly the most secure form of authentication," said Avivah Litan, an analyst with Gartner Inc., a U.S. technology analysis firm. "It's the hardest to imitate and duplicate."
About 350 banks in North America are using Diebold's hand geometry systems to clear customers into vaults so they can open their safe-deposit boxes. At Zions First National Bank in Salt Lake City and South Carolina Federal Credit Union, users place their hands on a screen, which reads the width of the palm, length of the fingers and other points of the hand.
Last year, Suruga Bank Ltd. in Japan began using ABMs that allow customers to access their accounts by holding their palms up to machines that read the pattern of blood vessels.
Finger scans — in which people are identified by multiple points on the finger rather than fingerprints — are being used at grocery stores and by people renting lockers at some airports, train stations, theme parks and the Statue of Liberty.
Later this year, NCR plans to begin selling finger readers to stores for use by employees and customers who volunteer. The technology is designed to speed up checkout and to prevent theft. The scans verify which cashiers are operating the registers, in case there is missing cash, as well as the identity of managers who approve customer checks.
Systems that scan the iris are being used at airports in Canada and the Netherlands to check passengers going through customs and at border points in the United Arab Emirates to identify people trying to enter the country with fake work visas. Biometrics are also being used in U.S. airports as part of a "registered traveller" program for prescreened fliers.
Diebold has tested ABMs with iris scans, but U.S. banks have yet to adopt the scanning because the systems are expensive and the cameras too large for small machines. Users had to practically put their noses on the screen for the scan to work.
Iridian Technologies Inc. has developed a smaller camera that costs less than $1,000 and can photograph the iris of a user 45 centimetres away, CEO Frank Fitzsimmons said.
Linda Campbell of Springfield, Ohio, said she probably would use a fingerprint ABM as long as she was sure that no one else could obtain her print.
But Connie Steele does not believe the technology would add that much more security to the card-and-PIN system.
"If I'm a thief and I've got the card," she said, "I still don't have your PIN number, so how could they use it?"
Supporters of the technologies are confident that bank customers eventually will accept the new ABMs.
"The real holy grail in biometrics," said Jim Block, Diebold's director of global advanced technology, "is let's get rid of the PIN so no one has anything to steal any more

By Sam Salmon on Oct 12, 2005, 09:37 in Friendly Talkzone.

Sam Salmon says on Oct 12, 2005, 09:38:

Something of a POS article content wise-written with a definite 'slant' but I thought people here would be interested in the Colombian angle

' a la orden!'

' a la orden!'

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Rubiazo says on Oct 12, 2005, 10:33:

Yeesh Yet another reason to keep your money under the mattress in Colombia.

I am totally opposed to biometrics. I really don't want them having that much info on me!!!

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Rubiazo says on Oct 12, 2005, 10:35:

There was an incident in Singapore where the thieves cut the tip off of the guy's index finger so they could steal his new Mercedes with biometric entry system! I don't think too many criminals in Colombia would be above plucking an eye out if they thought it would get them into a bank account!!

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Crazy4Cali says on Oct 12, 2005, 11:09:

I'd rather give up the PIN than a finger or an eye.

But that's just me.

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kernow62 says on Oct 12, 2005, 12:39:

Removing an eye won't work, but a finger will work for biometrics, that is one reason we are not recommending them and are installing units that measure the hand, once the hand is hacked off you don't have long to work with it before you cannot get it to sit correctly on the machine.

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