Here is how the technology works. The solution combines Public Key Cryptography, Smart Card and Biometric Technologies with Labcal’s SmartPrint authentication systems, allowing a user’s fingerprint characteristics (minutiae) to be stored as a template for reference on a secure token (smart card) during a registration process. Thereafter, the system can identify users by sensing their live fingerprints, reducing them to specific characteristics and then, comparing them with the biometric reference template stored on their tokens (in their possession at all times). Furthermore, all users’ information is electronically signed by a 1024-bit DSA private key. This feature lays the groundwork for integrity and traceability requirements of a highly secure system. Since the users’ fingerprint templates are stored on their tokens, the authentication process is not only faster and more robust, but it also alleviates any privacy concerns, as the system is not using a centralized fingerprints database. Indeed, it is absolutely impossible to reconstitute the exact fingerprint from the stored template.

The combination of these advanced technologies makes the SmartPrint Mountie a unique device for strong authentication, adapted especially for physical access control. Each issued card is linked to its enrollment officer through the uses of electronic signature, so as to prevent the fraudulent use of cards. Moreover, what makes the SmartPrint Mountie so unique is its compatibility with nearly all existing interfaces (RS-485, RS-422, RS-232, Wiegand) and the fact that Labcal supports several standard protocols allows us to integrate well with existing access control management systems thus preserving past investment. An organization can seamlessly replace any proximity reader already installed with a Labcal SmartPrint Mountie. The system can also operate without the smart cards, by keeping thousands of users’ fingerprint references inside the reader’s own memory.

“The market is demanding enhanced security and convenience for physical access control applications; combining fingerprints, smart card and cryptography can provide organizations with such premises,” according to Hugues Gervais, Vice President, Business Development for Labcal Technologies, Inc. Gervais adds “We have had a lot of requests from our current customers and business partners to integrate our expertise in Fingerprint, Smart Card and Public Key Cryptography into physical access control systems”.

The SmartPrint Mountie is currently being deployed in many organizations in the United States, Mexico, Germany, Saudi Arabia, India, Malaysia and Canada.

About Labcal Technologies, Inc.
Founded in 1995, Labcal Technologies Inc. markets authentication solutions based on Biometrics, PKI and Smart Card Technologies. With the industry’s most comprehensive portfolio of readers and software, Labcal offers trusted and highly secure digital identity systems for a wide range of applications such as: Logical Access Control, Physical Access Control, Military ID and National ID cards. Supported by an experienced research and development and professional services team, Labcal offers a full range of core and vertical-specific solutions to market demands for any of the following: Law Enforcement, Banking, Government, Military and Fortune 1000 Enterprises. For further information please visit the following site: www.labcal.com http://www.labcal.com/ .