In The Stratosphere
Yes, we all have heard of it. The Cloud. As customers, as small to medium sized business owners, we hear about it everyday. For those of you who may not have heard what the cloud is about (and admittedly, it took me some time to figure it all out as well), it is essentially outsourcing all of your computer and network infrastructure (including telephony) to a third party. There are tons of advantages to this, probably the two most are to the end user: 1) Substantial cost savings; 2) Setting up your IT infrastructure in just a matter of a few minutes and a few clicks with your mouse. And, the nice thing about the cloud is that just about any industry, application, or human being can use it to fit their needs almost perfectly. Such is even the case with the Biometrics Industry.
Here we go: “BridgePoint Systems, the broadest provider of smart-card readers and enrollment software for Physical Access Control Systems (PACs), today announced that Neal Smith Federal Building has implemented its TrustAlert PACS (formerly TrustZone PACS). BridgePoint and its partner, EmbarkIT, installed the new system ahead of schedule and within the facility's budget parameters . . . BridgePoint utilized Neal Smith Federal building's existing infrastructure to install TrustAlert PACS, all-the-while using a cloud-based protocol. This eliminated the need for locally-based IT server and system resources. The new Physical Access System is much more energy efficient than the previous security system because it leverages the General Service Administration's (GSA's) Wide Area Network (WAN) and remote IT infrastructure located in Kansas City, Missouri.” (SOURCE: http://www.findbiometrics.com/industry-news/i/9515/).
My Take
So as you can see from the above quote, the primary application in which the cloud was used for was physical access entry. Now, keep in mind that not the entire thing was in the cloud. Just the IT setup was (such as the servers, networking, etc. all the stuff that is needed to process the Biometric templates). Putting Biometrics into the cloud is something I have prodded upon on before a couple of times, and in fact I even called this sort of thing the BaaS: Biometrics as a Service (though I am sure that by now this name has been taken by others). There not have been too many reports on Biometrics applications from within the cloud, it is Voice Recognition which has been making the waves, especially when it comes to the call centers, and verification of the end user on the other end of the phone. The content in the above quote is probably the first time I have seen an approach from physical access entry.
Although this is a great leap for Biometrics, I am envisioning the day when Biometrics will be totally in the cloud. By this I mean that all of the Biometric templates, and processing will take place in the cloud (including all of the databases, and even the requisite software). All that would be needed is the just the hardware (such as the fingerprint scanner) for the business owner. And given that the cost of hardware is drastically coming down, this shouldn’t be too much of an expense of the business owner. Just think of all of the advantages here, with Biometrics in the cloud. No need to rehash them here, just do a Google search on the benefits, and extrapolate that to the world of Biometrics. But, one specific advantage should be mentioned here.
For those businesses which have offices worldwide, the cloud can bridge other business security needs very quickly. This can be best exemplified here as well. In this scenario, where some other 40+ buildings and another 500+ employees with different smart cards all had to come together under the same umbrella. And who can overlook the environmental benefits of the cloud, and going green??? But of course, with all of these benefits, there will be a downside to having Biometrics in the cloud. It is not from a technical standpoint, but from the social perspective. People are already freaked out about being scanned and having their templates stored, I just wonder what the reaction will be like once they find out it will all be stored in some database with a third party.
Probably images of Big Brother and the FBI’s massive fingerprint database will appear. So as much as progress is being made with the technology, the industry also needs to address this. I mean what’s the point if nobody is interested and scared, right??? Leaps and bounds will be met with serious setbacks, if the industry cannot simply educate people about Biometrics. But you know what, maybe it won’t be so bad when it all moves to the cloud.
After all, almost everybody has heard of it, and that could only help the acceptance rate more, and perhaps the usage of Biometrics. For somebody who relies upon the cloud for their tech writing needs, I can tell you, I am all for one for BaaS, and Biometrics in the cloud. Upwards, and onwards!!!
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