Bioscrypt shows FIPS 201-compliant PIV-Station

Markham, Ontario, Canada-based Bioscrypt today released its PIV-Station, a biometric reader designed to meet the needs of the U.S. federal government market. Bioscrypt’s PIV-Station aims to help U.S. federal organizations meet the HSPD-12-mandated Personal Identity Verification (PIV) requirements. The company’s experience in the biometric access control market would make it a natural candidate for devices suitable for the Federal Information Processing Standard (FIPS) 201 program. FIPS 201 requires all government agencies and contractors to authenticate civil servants and employees using stronger authentication methods, including fingerprint biometrics, for physical and logical access control. To meet the FIPS 201 standard, Bioscrypt ported its FIPS 201-approved Minutiae Interoperability Exchange (MINEX) algorithm to a high performance digital signal processor (DSP) from Texas Instruments which is embedded in the new reader. The inclusion of the DSP also adds flexibility to the PIV-Station, allowing it to accommodate future technical specifications for the evolving federal programs.

The FIPS 201 program is enticing to biometric companies: Nearly 3 million federal employees, 6 million state employees, and 500,000 contractors will be enrolled in the program, making it one of the largest biometric projects to date. The PIV-Station has received General Service Administration (GSA) approval as a FIPS 201-compliant Card Holder Unique Identifier (CHUID) Reader (Contact) and CHUID Reader (Contactless). The reader also incorporates Bioscrypt’s GSA-approved ANSI/INCITS 378 fingerprint template and is currently undergoing testing by GSA in the biometric reader category. Mindful of organizations dealing with legacy infrastructure, the PIV-Station supports card-read protocols, such as DESFire and Mifare.

Bioscrypt is big player in the biometric physical access control readers market and has 22 percent share of the Americas market.