BioMetAccess helps tighten companies' security, cut loss

You can tell a lot by a person's eyes, the clich says.

But BioMetAccess Company can tell everything by a person's eyes.

The company uses high-tech devices that scan fingerprints, hand or facial features, and the retina or iris to identify a person, said Nat Sprague, vice president of Springfield-based BioMetAccess.

Acceptance or rejection takes one to three seconds for fingerprint or hand recognition and three to five seconds for the other scanning methods.

"Some of this stuff is right out of Star Trek,' and I'm not kidding you ," Sprague said. "The stuff you see in movies, Mission Impossible' comes to mind, are a reality today."

While the technology may seem far-fetched, the uses are practical. Businesses ranging from day cares to executive offices and large industries are using the technology.

"A day care wants us" to install a system, Sprague said. "Whoever picks up the child has to have a registered fingerprint. (The child) can be selected by their picture and (the adult) puts their finger in, and if they don't match, that door doesn't unlock."

The company was founded about six months ago by Sprague and his brother, Randall Sprague, president. Randall Sprague, who lives in Sioux City, Iowa, is sales specialist, and Nat Sprague provides technical expertise. BioMetAccess distributes and resells biometric-access equipment and develops custom software for its use. The company also installs and services the equipment.

The company has offices in Springfield, Sioux City, Omaha, Neb., and Durbin, South Africa. Expansion is planned for four more Midwest markets in the next two years.

Nat Sprague's initial interest in the field was piqued by "buddy clocking," a system where employees fraudulently clock in their friends.

"We have a customer in South Africa that last year estimated they lost $1.6 million U.S. dollars just in buddy clocking," Sprague said. "We're tying 12 plants together. The software that comes out of the system goes directly into their payroll system. It's all integrated."

The devices themselves range in cost from $500 for a hand reader to $30,000 for a retina scanner. The installation and software costs vary according to the device and circumstances.

Some smaller fingerprint recognition devices can be used to limit access to executive offices or information technology rooms. A room-security device costs $1,000 and can store up to 99 different fingerprint signatures.

"There is a huge problem with intellectual theft," Sprague said. " I can biometrically protect an entire network system. They'll use either a biometric keyboard or biometric mouse so the system knows who they are. Then I'll protect the data room or IT room. They will know who took it.

"You can put in access for specific individuals at specific times only. It will not give them access at other times. It says You're not supposed to be here at midnight.' "

The biometric mouse costs about $100 and the keyboard costs about $160, Sprague said.

Another advantage of biometric-controlled access is that if a manager leaves the company, all the locks don't have to be changed.

"What if I have a plant of 500 people and I lose a key management person who has a key to everything in the plant?" Sprague said. "Now I have the job of replacing all those locks, reissuing the keys. It's a week's worth of work, plus the expense. All you do in my system is take them off the enrollment. It's a 30-second deal."

Technically speaking

Many employees are concerned about having their actual fingerprints on file, Sprague said. BioMetAccess devices, however, do not store the actual fingerprints. A device will store different parts of the finger and checks for matches at certain points. The devices also store a three-dimensional holographic image of the finger.

"I store templates of a fingerprint. The minutiae of a fingerprint," Sprague said. "This device will look at 94 different variations of the finger itself. I store those coordinates the mathematical equivalent of a fingerprint."

Sprague's favorite technological toy is the facial scan, he said.

"That actually has three security levels on that device. You shoot the face, they speak" and then enter a personal identification number, Sprague said.

The second security level appears to check a voice print, but it doesn't, Sprague said.

"It's actually watching the motion of the face, because when you talk, you've created a habit; you create techniques of how you talk," he said.

The software also can adjust for changes in the person's appearance, such as shaving or growing a mustache.

If a client needs 100 percent certainty about the person entering an area, Sprague said, there's only one way to go the retina or iris scan.

"The chances of duplicating a retina are 10 to the 94th power. The world population is something like 10 to the 12th power. It isn't going to happen. That's why in some of these government things, they're doing the eyes. It checks the pattern of the blood vessels, capillaries, striations and the ridges of the iris or retina."

The current wave of high-tech devices is practically impossible to fool, Sprague said. If a person were to cut another's finger off and try to use it to gain access to a fingerprint-controlled area, it wouldn't work.

"The system looks for movement like live subjects," Sprague said. "The same goes for pictures. On early devices you could (deceive it), but with the new holographic devices, it's impossible. It creates a hologram and looks at the depth, the nail and everything."

Home safety

BioMetAccess is set to begin marketing a fingerprint-controlled gun box called "BioVault." The box, which holds two pistols and ammunition, can have up to 16 different fingerprints stored in its memory. It will sell for $599, Sprague said.

"You can keep it by the bed and the kids can't get into that," Sprague said. "It is a concern handguns especially. It's hard for a kid to shoot himself with a rifle, but it's a real problem with pistols."

There are no biometric controlled gun locks available right now, Sprague said.

"The issue is power. What is your power source? This (door entry device) is powered by a nine-volt and eight AA batteries. You're talking about a lot of weight. Something has to read that print. (The gun box is) probably as small as you're going to get until the power issue is resolved."

The future

The next round of technological advancements is already here, Sprague said, with much of it "happening under the auspices of homeland defense and national security."

While pointing out he opposes some of the upcoming advances, he noted that developers are implanting chips in Alzheimer patients to be able to locate them if they wander away from home.

"But the trouble is how to power the chips because they have to go to the (global positioning system) satellite. Some are trying the body's electrical impulses as a power source," Sprague said.

A new "BlueTooth" technology has the support of the business and banking field, Sprague said.

"It's where you can go into a store, put your items in the basket and walk out and you're done. It reads infrared and radio frequency at the door. Each item will have its own frequency. The issue is how they recognize you. That's were the problem is," Sprague said.

SBJ freelance reporter Jan K. Allen contributed some information for this story.