Face Recognition SYSTEM
DESCRIPTION:
The I-Cube Face Recognition system is
used to assist in identification. 
The surveillance operator
manually compares the live or recorded images and the saved facial images against a database of
previously saved
face images, with an operator reviewing the results and making the decision.
This means that the accuracy of the system is NO LONGER crucial, as the system
presents information to a human operator to make the final decision. One
is using the face recognition system to check if the person has been seen
before, with the operator looking at the results to check the match. This
is due to the fact that the following affect the results of ANY face recognition
system: Lighting, quality of original image in the database, temporal
affects (time and ageing), glasses, hats, shadows, hair style or lack of hair,
background, size of face in the image, and a WIDE RANGE of other environmental
conditions. One is using
Face Recognition to assist in IDENTIFICATION of repeat trouble makers, banned
gamblers, shop lifters, bad check passes and then the operator decides on
the appropriate action to follow.
Please
use the I-Cube
Face Recognition System design and costing in order to select the best
system for your application.
The following is the "typical" system for a client who already
has cameras.
THE
LAP TOP SYSTEM:
I-CUBE
will provide the face recognition software and computer and everything
required to do face recognition. The FACE RECOGNITION system consists of
the following:
COMPUTER
HARDWARE (lap top)
- Intel Pentium 1.7Ghz Processor (Min.)
-
128 MB Memory (Min.)
- 10 GB 5400 rpm Hard Drive (Min.)
- 16 MB Graphics Card (Min.)
- 40X CD Rom (Min.)
- 1.44 MB Stiffy Drive
- 14I Colour Digital Monitor (Min.)
COMPUTER
SOFTWARE
- Windows 2000 and face recognition software.
FACE
RECOGNITION HARDWARE
(IF REQUIRED)
- Frame
Grabber.
A host of companies, including the big IT services companies such
as CSC,
IBM,
EDS,
Accenture,
BT
and Fujitsu Services, are expected to bid for contracts to build the
£1bn biometric identity card system.
These systems integrators are being asked to put together consortia
of biometrics companies that can deliver every part of the programme,
from initially storing people’s fingerprint and facial details to
manufacturing the cards and managing the database of biometric
information.
The biometrics companies that expected to play a key role include Sagem
of France, Nec
of Japan, LG
of South Korea, Dermalog of Germany as well as US companies L-1
Identity Solutions, Motorola,
Cogent
and Cross Match.
The exact pattern of alliances between systems integrators and
biometrics companies is being feverishly negotiated and a number of
partnerships are expected to be announced in the next few weeks.
Some are still hesitant about clinching deals, however, as the
details of the ID cards system have yet to be finalised.
“We are standing around the walls of the dance eyeing each other
up, but until we know what tune is going to be played, we won’t know
exactly how we want to partner up,” said Malcolm Stirling, executive
for public sector projects at CSC.
A complicating factor is the fact that the government has
structured the framework contracts so that it can switch between
different suppliers on different parts of the project if it chooses.
The network of suppliers a systems integrator lines up may not,
therefore, be the one it ends up working with.
The project has been designed in this way to avoid the problems
experienced during the revamp of the health service IT system, when
failures at one software vendor, iSoft, resulted in long delays across
the project.
Siemens
Business Services, which works with the Identity and Passport Service
on biometric passports, is thought to be in a strong position to win
work with the ID cards scheme. Similarly, L-1 Identity Solutions,
which provides technology for e-passports, is thought to be in pole
position.
However, other companies have been getting biometrics experience
over the past year. Accenture completed a six-month trial last spring
of a biometric identification card for frequent flyers at Heathrow’s
Terminal 3. The company is also involved in managing the database for
US Visit, the US biometric border control scheme, which has more than
70m records so far.
CSC has been involved in creating identity card systems in Belgium
and Malaysia, and Fujitsu Siemens has been working with biometric
passport schemes in Finland and Japan. BT is also understood to have
spent a great deal of research and development funding on biometrics.
Copyright
The Financial Times Limited 2007
Indentity Theft-Related Data Breaches Inceasingly
Stemming From Laptop Theft
More than half of identity theft-related daa
breaches steam from the theft or loss of a laptop or storage device,
according to Semantec.
By Elena Malykhina, InformationWeek
Wall
Street & Technology
May 31, 2007
When it comes to objects wonderfully suited to being lost or stolen,
it's tough to beat a laptop computer. The stats reveal a widespread,
costly problem: 81 percent of 484 IT pros surveyed by security
consulting firm Ponemon Institute say their company lost at least one
laptop with sensitive information in the past year. And more than half
of identity theft-related data breaches stem from the theft or loss of a
laptop or storage device, according to Symantec.
Yet most companies aren't locking down every laptop. Maybe the data
isn't worth the price of securing the computer, but for most financial
services companies there are no excuses. The options for securing
laptops are expanding and in many cases getting more practical for
broader use.
Authentication: Who's Signing On?
Biometrics is one of those ideas that everyone's familiar with
but hardly anyone actually uses. Several advances, however, might chip
away at the obstacles that have kept this a niche application. Foremost
is making biometrics easier to use.
If a biometric device isn't built into a laptop, it's not practical.
Fortunately, laptops from Dell, Fujitsu, Hewlett-Packard, Lenovo,
Toshiba and others now include fingerprint readers. Lenovo, for
instance, last October introduced ThinkPad laptops that include a
fingerprint reader and related Utimaco software to authenticate users.
Replacing passwords has productivity as well as security appeal because
it can cost $100 per employee a year to reset passwords, says Stacy
Cannady, a security product manager at Lenovo.
There's less activity beyond fingerprints. Bioscrypt last month
introduced a USB-pluggable 3-inch, 3-D face-recognition camera that can
authenticate computer users. But face recognition relies on an external
camera, so it has the same problem other biometrics options do. Unless
it's integrated into a laptop like a webcam, it will remain mostly for
authenticating desktop PC users. Another limitation is that to use the
system, a person must undergo a digital face measurement.
The next area of focus for laptop makers is to make biometrics more
intuitive, because "if security becomes a burden, people will
bypass it," says Shab Madina, product marketing manager for HP's
Personal Systems Group. Mass adoption will be slow going. A typical
company might replace a laptop every three years, and most aren't likely
to speed that up just to get built-in biometrics.
Smart Card Readers also are becoming more common. HP made them
standard on many business laptops last year. Most laptop makers either
have smart card readers built in or can support them via a PC card slot
or a USB slot.
Few companies have used smart cards for PC security, though, because
it wasn't economical to have one card for PCs and one for building
access, says Ed MacBeth, senior marketing VP at ActivIdentity, a
provider of smart card software. But advanced smart cards now allow, on
a single card, the storage of passwords and other data, such as
building-entry credentials. They also can generate one-time passwords.
Vendors are pitching smart cards to secure smartphones, too. Research
In Motion's BlackBerry Smart Card Reader is worn like an ID badge and
prevents use of a BlackBerry if the badge is out of the device's
Bluetooth wireless range. The same reader can be used to authenticate a
Bluetooth-enabled laptop user.
The Trusted Platform Module (TPM) is an embedded security chip
that likely will become increasingly important in the coming year. It's
based on a standard from the Trusted
Computing Group, which was formed by Advanced Micro Devices, HP,
IBM, Infineon, Intel, Lenovo, Microsoft and Sun Microsystems to push
hardware-enabled security. The chip stores keys, passwords and digital
certificates, and can be used in conjunction with portable tokens such
as smart cards or biometrics to authenticate a laptop user.
The idea behind the Trusted Platform Module is that it removes some
of the security from the operating system (OS). So if someone takes out
a hard drive to get around a laptop's security software, for example,
he's unlikely to be able to access data because password information or
encryption keys are stored with the chip. Windows Vista uses TPM as part
of its BitLocker Drive Encryption feature, so TPM's importance will rise
with Vista adoption.
BIOS (Basic Input/Output System) Security is the most
fundamental laptop security, providing authentication through a password
before the OS boots. "If you can't get into the operating system,
you can't steal data," says Paul Moore, senior director of mobile
product marketing at Fujitsu. Most laptops ship with similar BIOS
password protections, so it's a matter of making sure they're set up to
keep unauthorized users from modifying the BIOS without administrative
access. Most have management capabilities that let administrators
remotely set BIOS security policies.
HP last year integrated Disk Sanitizer into the BIOS of its laptops.
The feature lets companies wipe laptop hard drives clean by writing over
them multiple times.
Encryption: What Can They Get Access To?
Encryption Hardware from Seagate Technology, the world's
biggest hard-drive maker, offers businesses a new option — securing
laptops from the inside out with the first encrypting hard-disk drives.
The first Momentus 5400 FDE.2 hard drive with Seagate's DriveTrust
technology shipped this quarter in laptops from ASI Computer
Technologies. Seagate makes a claim not many security vendors dare —
that laptops with Momentus may be exempt from state data breach
disclosure laws if the computer is lost.
Seagate's hard drive uses a government-grade security protocol to
encrypt all stored data, even temporary files. The encryption can't be
turned off, so users can't violate policy. To access the drive, users
need to type in a password. "A thief may get into the operating
system, but they won't get into the hard drive," says Dan Good, VP
of new business initiatives at Seagate.
But an encrypted hard drive doesn't eliminate all security risks. The
encryption on Seagate's Momentus remains unlocked unless a laptop is
switched off. That means users will have to make sure they don't leave
their laptops unattended in hibernation mode, which is a default in
Windows Vista.
Hitachi will offer hardware encryption as an option on all of its
2.5-inch drives starting this year. Lenovo is evaluating whether it
wants to provide encrypting hard drives as an option or a standard in
its laptops, and Seagate is likely to have competition soon from other
hard-drive makers. "Pretty much all the PC makers will eventually
go to market offering these drives," says Stacy Cannady, Lenovo's
security product manager.
Encryption Software is the more common approach to full-disk
encryption, provided by vendors such as GuardianEdge Technologies, PGP
and Pointsec Mobile Technologies, which was recently acquired by Check
Point Software Technologies. Additionally, Windows Vista's Enterprise
and Ultimate editions offer an encryption feature through BitLocker.
Full-disk encryption software encrypts every bit of data, which is
similar to what Seagate offers with its encrypting hard drive. One major
benefit of the software approach is that a company can install it across
different operating systems and laptop models.
Yet "encrypt everything" is an expensive and potentially
risky approach. There's the cost of software, training and support. The
extra software and hardware layers also can slow the performance of
systems, especially when data packets must be decrypted by firewalls and
intrusion-prevention systems to spot intrusions. Most difficult is that
decryption keys can be lost or stolen — which leaves the rightful
owner of the laptop unable to access sensitive data, just as surely as
it would a thief.
Courtesy of InformationWeek, a CMP Technology property.
