Expanding its capabilities into a new area, Cross Match Technologies has acquired Canada’s Labcal Technologies Inc., a developer and supplier of a ruggedized mobile and wireless handheld authentication device that reads fingerprints and various types of identification cards, instantly giving Cross Match a play in emerging and evolving credential programs.
Terms of the deal were nt disclosed. Labcal, which has fewer than 20 employees, in 2006 introduced its Be.U Mobile handheld identity management device, which meets U.S. Defense Department MIL-STD-810F specifications and the IP65 Ingress Protection rating.
Last September Cross Match introduced its own mobile and wireless handheld card reading and biometric authentication product, the Verifier MW. However, development of the device is well behind the Be.U Mobile, which has been in production and has existing customers.
“The Verifier MW is great for collecting forensic quality images to do 1 to N matching, and it can support an onboard database, but it doesn’t have all of the other onboard card or credential reading capabilities yet,” Tom Buss, senior vice president for Strategic Initiatives at Cross Match, tells TR2. “Now we may or may not choose to add value to the MW as time goes on. That depends on how this plays out.”
The Be.U can read various cards such as contact, contactless and two-dimensional barcodes, allowing it to reach a wider market. The fingerprint scanner on the device is supplied by UPEK, Inc., and is FIPS-201 certified. The product has applications for the Department of Homeland Security’s Transportation Worker Identification Credential (TWIC), the Pentagon’s Common Access Card, HSPD-12 requirements, national identification programs and more, Buss says.
“Labcal already has very strong contacts with all those potential emerging program,” he says.
Another feature of the Be.U that Cross Match likes is its modularity.
So “it’s very easy for us to add and enhance the technology that’s there for certain of our customers,” Buss says. “The platform is very suitable for applications involving rapid identification using wireless communication either for checking against onboard or remote databases.”
The Be.U also has built in local or wide area communications links, allowing it to communicate via broadband wireless or through a local network connection, Buss says.
While the Be.U would do well for rapid identification, that’s also where the Verifier MW may have a play, Buss says. For rapid identification you don’t need a reader function, which is why the Verifier MW will be “a very attractive product for law enforcement,” he says.
Both the Be.U and Verifier MW are going to “coexist,” Buss says. Whether Cross Match further develops the Verifier MW or not will be evaluated as Labcal is integrated into the company, he adds.
The fingerprint scanning component of the Verifier MW is optical and on the Be.U it’s a capacitive scanner. Capacitive sensors are lightweight and small and does well for authenticating a fingerprint against a template stored on a smart card but an optical sensor is better for enrollment applications, Buss says.
Another key aspect of the deal for Cross Match is Labcal’s small, but highly capable workforce, most of whom are engineers, Buss says. “It’s a small group of focused guys that really understand this market of civil ID and credential authentication and validation.”
“They may in fact help us to enhance or complete the MW line as well,” Buss says. “We’ve got folks in different business locations focusing on different things and we now have a Canadian subsidiary that may become the focus of our portable activities.”
Buss also says that Cross Match’s sales and marketing capabilities will enable Labcal to extend its reach a wider marketplace. “That was part of the win, win of this deal,” he says.
Labcal has a variety of customers for its Be.U Mobile with the Canadian Air Transport Security Administration maybe the most visible. Early last year CATSA selected the device to authenticate employees in every Tier 1 and 2 airport in Canada who have Restricted Area ID cards, which is similar to TWIC, Buss says Labcal also has some small customers in the U.S. for the Be.U, which is being evaluated by some potential large customers here, he says.
Labcal also has some customers in the healthcare market for its SmartProfile business, which is a biometrically secured single sign on for logical access control.
Cross Match said the deal would be accretive to its earnings and gross margins.
I Scan 2 Update
Separately, regarding another new product of Cross Match’s, this the dual iris capture scanner it introduced last fall, Buss says it is already generating sales. The I Scan 2 is being sold to the U.S. military as part of the company’s multimodal biometric jump kits being used in war zones. The device is easy to use and automatically collects both iris images from an individual, quickly and nearly simultaneously.
In addition, the jump kits also include, for the first time, the company’s Mission Oriented Biometric Software (MOBS), which makes it easy to use the biometric capture kits. MOBS is an icon driven software meant to be used with touch screen computers, making it easy for soldiers to move through the process of capturing and storing fingerprints and iris images. Buss says that Cross Match has had some large recent orders from the Defense Department that included MOBS.
Cross Match also recently sold jump kits that are combined with satellite communications technology, giving deployed military users more flexibility in checking biometric databases back in the U.S. Cross Match is working with Texas-based AOS Inc., a network mobility and communications solutions provider, which makes a small, lightweight satellite terminal called BGAN.
Buss says the BGAN terminal, combined with AOS’ software called SkyPipe, allows for rapid satellite communications. “We’ve actually sent complete multi-biometric finger, face and iris biometric records from the field over the satellite communications to the DoD ABIS (Automated Biometric Identification System) in three minutes or less,” Buss says.
The terminal is battery operated, weighs just over 2 pounds, and doesn’t require any infrastructure or radio communications. “It will work in Iraq, the Congo, Colombia, or our southern borders,” Buss says. The technology has been shown to the SBInet program, where there is interest, although they currently have more pressing concerns, he says.