By Calvin Biesecker
The Department of Homeland Security has awarded Intellicheck Mobilisa [IDN] a small contract to supply five handheld biometric-enabled smart card readers to be used for security purposes at the Port of New York/New Jersey this winter under the Transportation Worker Identification Credential (TWIC) program.
The award is valued at $240,000 in the first year and contains two one-year options. Intellicheck Mobilisa is supplying its IM2700 reader, which can read and verify a TWIC card, verify a PIN and match fingerprints. Training and deployment of the handheld devices was expected to begin by late Dec. 2009, Steve Williams, the company’s chief operating officer, told sister publication TR2. More readers can be added for the pilot at any time, he says.
The handheld readers will be used at gate entrances to authenticate the TWIC card and verify the card belongs to a particular truck driver, Williams said. The devices can also run a check against a hot list for individual’s whose TWIC cards have been suspended or revoked.
Intellicheck’s readers are being deployed at two separate locations at the Port of NY/NJ. In one deployment the IM2700 will be integrated with an existing physical access control system that is supplied by Diebold [DBD]. The other deployment will involve the installation of a new access control system, Williams says.
In addition to the TWIC pilot at the Port of NY/NJ, Intellicheck has several other pilot projects ongoing with its IM2700 reader. One is at a seaport in Washington involving several of the handheld devices. Williams said this and the other pilots are leading to changes and improvements in the hardware as well as operational lessons such as how people try to defeat the system such as by damaging the magnetic stripes and computer chips inside the smart ID cards. The Washington pilot is not being funded by DHS but is under the auspices of the TWIC program, Williams said.
The other two pilots Intellicheck is involved with include a port on the East Coast and another on the West Coast. The exact locations cannot be disclosed, Williams said. The point of all these efforts is to learn lessons under different environmental conditions, he added.
Williams believes that small ports represent a significant market for handheld reader, in part because they are relatively low cost and because these ports often don’t have power at their front gate for fixed readers.
Intellicheck’s goal for the final IM2700 product is to have it also be able to do badge checks for any port’s own secure credentials in addition to reading and verifying TWIC cards, Williams said. This will give ports a flexible solution that can work with multiple credentials. The device could also be used to enroll someone in the port’s access control system, he said. Another key selling point of the IM2700 is that it is certified to meet the federal government’s FIPS-201 physical access control system standards.
The TWIC reader pilots have been slow to get going. In part, that may be because integrating biometric-enabled smart card readers with existing physical access control systems has proven to be more difficult than anticipated.
Williams keeps in touch with other vendors in the identity solutions space and he said that everyone has put a lot of effort in getting their systems ready for the TWIC program but that it’s “taking longer to realize the fruits of our labor.”
Identity management solutions account for about two-thirds of Intellicheck’s business. The company had nearly $10 million in sales in 2008. The rest of the business is in wireless solutions.
The identity business, which is largely handheld readers the company develops and sells, is roughly split between military and commercial/non-military government customers. Intellicheck provides identity solutions for 200 U.S. military installations.
Intellicheck’s defense solutions are branded Defense ID and include a range of handheld readers and a control station for access control. The Air Force gave Defense ID a secure accreditation, which means it is now available for procurements by all Air Force bases nationwide. Defense ID already has secured accreditations from the Army, Navy and Marine Corps.