The use of cards, pins and passwords (CPPs) for physical entry as well as to protect organisations’ confidential information technology (IT) data against theft and fraud is becoming increasingly insecure, SuperVision Biometric Systems marketing head Mark Eardley says.

He argues that, in some instances, passwords are being used as “passports” for criminals to defraud an organisation, with the biggest threats coming from inside organisations. Global professional services firm Pricewater- houseCooper’s 2009 ‘Global Economic Crime Survey’ said that 62% of economic crime in South African businesses was committed by insiders.

Companies could reduce this risk, Eardley argues, by deploying biometrics solutions, which are methods of identifying individuals through one or more physical characteristics or behavioural traits. Because the company is able to trace every action of every employee in the company, should any criminal or unusual action take place, those involved would be identified through fingerprint records and stored information.

The biometric information can also be used for other priorities, such as safety, and SuperVision has developed software to enable the seamless use of such information for multiple applications. The solution replaces CPPs with fingerprints, right from initial sign-on through to accessing the applications that are a feature of modern corporate IT, including the Internet.

Fingerprint biometrics from diversified French electronics company Sagem are used by SuperVision and represent a major technological advance of the past five years in South African identity-based solutions. There are now over 50 000 fingerprint readers deployed across South Africa, controlling workplace access for some two-million employees.

Automated fingerprint identification systems work by recognising specific features of the fingerprint, known as minutia points. On average, a fingerprint has 85 minutia points, creating a unique pattern or template that distinguishes one fingerprint from all others.

Fingerprint scanning technology converts and stores this unique template as a mathematical code for future matching. The more true minutia points that can be captured, the higher the accuracy of the biometric data and, therefore, the lower the rate of false acceptances and false rejections.