The Port of Houston, Texas, has purchased a small quantity of handheld biometric-enabled smart card readers from Intellicheck Mobilisa [IDN], expanding the company’s footprint of seaports operating with its reader technology for the federal Transportation Worker Identification Credential (TWIC). Intellicheck is supplying its IM2700 TWIC reader, which can access ID information via one and two-dimensional bar codes, magnetic stripe, smart chip, proximity or radio frequency identification, and fingerprint. While the deployment is small, Intellicheck Chief Operating Officer Steve Williams tells TR2 that the company’s initial sales to ports and military bases of its access control reader devices are typically small but usually result in follow-on orders as the customer gains confidence in the technology and its benefits. For example, he says, the company’s Defense ID systems are used at a number of U.S. military installations, and the usual first order amounts to between $200,000 and $250,000 but follow-on purchases amount to over $1 million at these bases. The IM2700 is also being used to read TWIC cards at the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, and at ports in San Diego, Calif., and Tacoma, Wash. (TR2, Jan. 6). Williams says that at the Port of NY/NJ, which began with several of readers, additional units have been sold to a marine terminal and that local interest extended to one of the city’s major airports where additional units were purchased to allow random checks of truckers entering the facility. At the Port of Houston, where over 124,000 TWIC cards have been activated, Williams says there is plenty of opportunity for expansion with reader systems. In Houston Intellicheck is working with AMAG Technology, which provides the legacy security management system at the port. Williams says that users of the smart card reader technology are still “figuring out this new technology” because they are so used to the flash passes. Already with each deployment, once a few people are caught with fraudulent identity cards, demand for the smart reader technology grows, he says.