Identica Holdings Corporation

user to “do anything,” for example, position themselves in relation to or have physical contact with a reader, will be prove safer (no transmission of germs) and more convenient for users.

  • Secure transaction capability will ultimately define the genuine opportunity for large scale, wide spread deployment of biometric technologies. The technology itself will, in many respects, become inconsequential as the applications it delivers become essential components of twenty-first century life.

    • IBG’s analysis and estimates dovetail with those of Acuity. IBG says that in 2008 the biometric industry revenues reached nearly $4 billion. It predicts that by 2012 the market will reach $7.4 billion:

    Identica and vascular pattern recognition

    Where does Tampa, Florida-based Identica Holdings Corporation fit in this larger sweep of biometric trends? The company champions one of the newest biometric technologies: Vascular pattern recognition, also referred to as vein pattern authentication. The technology uses near-infrared light to derive reflected or transmitted images of blood vessels of a hand or finger, and these images are used for authenticating individuals. Different vendors use different parts of the hand, back of the hand, palms, or fingers, but they all rely on a similar methodology. The vascular pattern of the human body is unique to an individual and does not change as people age. Identica and other advocates of the technology say it has these advantages:

    •  Difficult to forge: Vascular patterns are difficult to recreate because they are inside the hand and, for some approaches, blood needs to flow to register an image
    • Ageless: The pattern of blood vessels is individual-specific and does not change in aging (although the precise effects of aging, heart attacks, and medical problems with one’s arteries on the scans are yet to be determined fully)
    • Immune to distortions: The pattern is largely immune to interference or distortion by dirt and scars on the surface
    • Storage: Option of storing the encrypted unique personal template on media such as a smart card, network server and 2D barcode
    • Contact-less: Users do not touch the sensing surface, thus assuaging hygiene concerns, improving user acceptance, and reducing maintenance cost of the equipment
    • Simple: The simplicity of the hardware and the speed of recognition are the great advantages of this technique over other existing methods
    • Has many and varied uses: It is deployed in ATMs, hospitals, law enforcement, IT rooms, airports, ports, government and universities; applications include ID verification, high security physical access control, high security network