Access Control

Access control is currently the principal focus of Iris ID’s business with the Iris ID IrisAccess 7000 platform. As the successor to the legendary IrisAccess 2200/3000/4000, it is widely deployed in both public and private sectors around the world, providing state-of-the-art access control to organizations valuing human and physical assets. Depending on the level of security required, it may serve as the access control point for an entire facility, or it may be deployed in a particularly sensitive area of company operations.

Data Center

One area in which Iris ID is gaining considerable attention and acceptance for IrisAccess is in data center access control. The repositories of information regarding business, employees, customers and competitors contain a company’s most valuable asset – information compiled over time at considerable expense. Forward thinking organizations know there is a lot more to data security than firewalls and redundancy, or even off-site back-up. The value proposition for ensuring that the highest level of security is in place to ensure only those who need access and who have the appropriate privileges gain access to a company or government business “nerve center” is compelling and easily grasped by most data center managers. Iris ID counts some of the most data-dependent organizations in the world among its customers.

Essential Infrastructure

With Homeland Security issues an ever present concern, and events of the past summer making only too clear how dependent the country is on safe secure power, it’s reassuring to know Iris ID’s IrisAccess platforms protect and control access to both conventional and nuclear power plants and water treatment and distribution facilities. Inquiries from federal and more regional levels in the U.S. and abroad suggest this will be a growing area of importance for both the technology and Iris ID.

Transportation

Iris recognition and Iris ID’s IrisAccess platforms have already made inroads into the area of transportation security – in Amsterdam’s Schiphol, London’s Heathrow, New York’s Kennedy, Germany’s Frankfurt, Canada’s Vancouver, and Greece’s Athens airports, just part of a list that grows longer every month. Interestingly, the technology is used for more than just controlling access to sensitive areas of the airport’s operations.

Amsterdam’s Schipohl has a program called Privium developed and implemented by Dartagnan Biometric Solutions, using the technology and the IrisAccess platform for passenger processing/border clearance. With biometrics soon to be contained in passports, and on travel documents themselves and the need to get more than 1.5 billion people from “here to there” every year, there is most definitely a role for this highly accurate technology to authenticate customers with confidence and speed them on their way.

Pharmaceutical and Healthcare

One area in which there’s a premium placed on access control is in the pharmaceutical-biotech-healthcare space. Access control is important to companies that spend hundreds of millions, even billions, developing new drugs. Compromising security in such environments can lead to lost market advantage, jeopardized clinical trials, etc. This area is also one where a considerable amount of work is being done on disease control or even bio-terror threat assessment and prevention. Regular hospitals and clinic facilities also seek more robust security for sensitive areas, such as pharmacy where controlled substances are kept, and areas like nuclear medicine where tighter control of materials and waste has been mandated by Homeland Security directives.

One of the principal appeals of the Iris ID IrisAccess is the platform’s ability to provide non-contact authentication – an ideal solution for environments where rubber gloves, masks, safety glasses or goggles are the norm rather than the exception. No other technology can accommodate the rubber glove/goggles/mask challenge with anything that approaches the efficacy of the Iris ID IrisAccess.

Hospital providers and Insurance payers are also starting to look to iris recognition and its ability to secure access and definitively authenticate identity as a potential answer to the patient record data management challenges stemming from the adoption and future enforcement of HIPAA patient privacy provisions.

Unique Applications

Iris recognition technology is finding its way into the education sector – not just for security but for other applications as well. It’s being used in daycare and schools to restrict access and establish the identity of school employees, as well as parents or other adults who come to school to pick up particular children. (When used this way, there is a list of enrolled individuals who are “bound” to a particular child’s identity. The child can only be released to these individuals.)

Other schools have piloted programs in which Iris ID’s IrisAccess is used to authenticate identity and manage school lunch programs, allowing for non-stigmatized cashless authentication at the cashier. This ensures that students getting government support are properly identified, and that correct charges are made to students whose parents provide funds for lunch.