Today GenKey announced that Arnd Langguth has joined the company as Director Sales. Before joining GenKey, Arnd was Vice President of Sales for EMEA, Asia & Pacific at Cross Match Technologies and, prior to that, Technical Manager OEM Relations at ActivIDentity. Arnd brings extensive knowledge and expertise in the field of biometrics and security solutions. “I am very excited to join this dedicated team”, says Arnd Langguth, “I believe that GenKey’s BioHASH®-based technology is the key building block for all biometric ID projects that require privacy, speed and security”.

“I am very happy that we can welcome Arnd in our team”, says Michiel van der Veen, CEO of GenKey, “with his strong technical and sales background we can further strengthen our international activities”.

GenKey is an international IT company with offices in the Netherlands, Africa, India and US. GenKey offers solutions for biometric ID systems with a focus on biometric enrollment, large-scale biometric de-duplication and biometric verification. The GenKey’s BioHASH® solutions comply with ISO standard 24745 for Biometric Template Protection providing benefits for ultra-high speed of matching and intrinsically secure and low-cost storage on, for example, RFID or barcodes.

GenKey Solutions

www.genkey.com

Hitachi Europe, a supplier of finger vein technology, has announced that it is entering an initial phase of collaboration with GenKey, a provider of ISO 24745 compliant Privacy Enhancing Technology (PET).

 Hitachi’s finger vein system works by transmission of near infra-red light into the finger from LEDs inside the scanner. Light penetrates the finger and is absorbed by the haemoglobin within the finger veins, creating an image for capture by CCD camera. The image is processed to create a finger vein pattern that is digitised, compressed and stored as template data.

The benefits of Hitachi’s system include: the finger vein pattern inside the finger cannot be acquired easily without consent; processing time is very fast (around 0.5 seconds to acquire, process and validate) and there is no link to criminality as in the case of some fingerprint systems.

 GenKey, meanwhile, has technology that helps eliminate privacy and security concerns in biometric deployments. The company’s BioHASH solution stores and matches fingervein information using an irreversible binary hash code. The same hash technology is routinely used in securing PIN codes in financial transactions and passwords in IT security.

 Ravi Ahluwalia, Deputy General Manager, Information Systems Group, at Hitachi Europe said: “Working together will provide a great benefit for both Hitachi and GenKey, as our technologies perfectly complement each other to expand our ability to support various needs for PET technologies. Vein ID has gone from strength to strength in Japan and Europe over the last years and this collaboration will further enhance market penetration while ensuring the highest level of data security for end-users.”

 ”I am very excited about this collaboration as this brings together key elements in biometrics” says Michiel van der Veen, CEO of GenKey, “Hitachi’s traceless technology and GenKey’s secure and private storage with extremely fast matching capabilities creates a solution that will be the standard in biometric deployments“

The merged company will carry the GenKey name, and will be headquartered at the High Tech Campus in Eindhoven, the Netherlands, with further offices in the US, Ghana and India. The new GenKey will be headed by the ex-CEO of priv-ID, Michiel van der Veen, supported by a strong management team from both companies: Michiel Loeff (VP Sales), Gavan Duffy (CTO) and Alty van Luijt (Special Advisor). The implementation of the merger is expected to be completed in Q3 of 2011.

The former GenKey and priv-ID both developed PET technology for biometrics resulting in BioCryptics® and BioHASH® solutions, respectively. These solutions follow the ISO 24745 standard for Biometric Template Protection and address concerns that are often voiced about traditional biometrics. By integrating both technologies GenKey will offer a combination of performance, security and privacy that will change the way biometrics is used. GenKey will continue to go-to-market together with the world-leading firms on biometric ID-cards as well as payment solutions. We will continue to run and offer turnkey biometric ID card projects in Europe, India and Africa.

“I am very excited about this merger. With our technology and highly skilled and motivated team we are well positioned to create a major breakthrough in the biometric market” says Michiel van der Veen, CEO of the new Genkey. “Also our global market presence and extended product offering provide a solid basis for our future growth”.

“Privacy respecting biometrics is one of the world’s most exciting authentication technologies” says Jorn Lyseggen, founder of GenKey and Chairman of the Supervisory Board. “With this merger, we bring together 100 years of research and a phenomenal portfolio of patents and intellectual property assets. Through this merger, Genkey emerges as the undisputed world leader in its space.”

 Match-on-Card is a widely used concept for storing and matching fingerprint templates on a smart card. Traditional match-on-card systems are facing some practical drawbacks:

• The large code-size requirement in EEPROM makes typical match-on-card implementations costly or requires vendors to implement the MoC in ROM, which incurs significant development time and logistic complexity.
• Typical matching times are strongly card dependent and have to be optimized in a trade-off between matching accuracy and matching speed. Native code is sometimes used to achieve higher speed, but this comes at the expense of portability and vendor-independence.
• Traditional match-on-card algorithms are designed for one single modality like fingerprint or iris or face or vein. Deployment of a multi modal, or modality independent, system requires installation of multiple match-on-card algorithms.

 priv-ID’s match-on-card is based on the successful BioHASH® technology, that transforms the biometrics into a binary feature vector, that can be protected with an off-the-shelf cryptographic hash function such as SHA-256. The BioHASH® matcher is modality independent and works the same for fingerprint, iris, face or vein information.

 “This development will provide our partners and customers the opportunity to deploy a BioHASH® modality independent match-on-card system that minimizes the impact on EEPROM, reduces cost and improves matching speed, while maintaining the matching accuracy” says Michiel van der Veen, CEO of priv-ID. “One single BioHASH® match-on-card implementation that works for fingerprint and vein will have enormous market benefits for applications like identity cards, logical access control or EMV compliant payment cards”  

 On December 6-9, 2010, priv-ID will exhibit at Cartes in Paris (booth 4K103), where it will demonstrate the BioHASH® match-on-card solutions.

priv-ID is a spin-out company from Philips Electronics, where the foundation was laid for the revolutionary technology that the company will now bring to market. Michiel van der Veen and Alty van Luijt, who both have a long term Philips track record, will head the company as CEO and SVP for Strategy and Business Development, respectively.

priv-ID offers world-class multi-modal private biometric software (priv-IDcard) to intrinsically link an individual to a personal ID-card where biometric information is stored in printed barcodes or cost-effective RFID’s. This biometric encryption based solution brings essential benefits in identity management systems across market segments.

• Healthcare: it is now possible to link a patient or practitioner to a personal health-card while supporting strict privacy regulations such as HIPAA. Key benefits are the reduction of financial and medical risks due to phantom billing, identity theft or card sharing and secure access to digital and on-line available medical information.
• Traveler: couple the identity of a traveler to an ID card in a convenient, cost effective and private manner. This makes it possible to speed-up border crossing, secure boarding processes, perform cross-border verification or extend functionality of legacyePassports.
• Enterprise, Leisure and Entertainment: personalize and secure corporate ID cards, event & VIP tickets, campus IDs, etc. priv-IDcard will minimize fraud and bring maximum privilege and convenience to end-users.
• Government: Uniquely establish the biometric identity for legal documents such as ePassports, driver’s license, immigrant registration, permits etc. For developing countries the need for authentication of people’s identity is just as strong as elsewhere. These nations can leapfrog their more developing counterparts by using priv-ID in lowcost, yet robust identity programs.

“We are looking forward to this opportunity and the impact that biometric encryption solutions will have on the biometric market. We are now, more than ever in a position to serve the needs of our customers in a flexible and dedicated way”, says Michiel van der Veen, CEO of priv-ID. “We have been able to hire a strong and committed core team, including all founders of this technology. Our first commercial trial based on our initial released product is starting this month.”

Sake Bosch, founder and Managing Partner of Prime Technology Ventures says: “We are delighted with the acquisition of priv-ID. We strongly believe in the combination of the company’s very solid scientific foundation technology from one of the most respected industrial research laboratories, a committed and enthusiastic team and a proposition that can help remove bottlenecks in the growth market of biometrics.”

Dr. Ann Cavoukian, Information and Privacy Commissioner of Ontario (www.ipc.on.ca) comments: “The establishment of priv-ID is an important milestone in the development of Biometric Encryption as a viable privacy-enhancing alternative to conventional biometric technologies. priv-ID’s innovative ability to combine robust authentication with exceptionally strong privacy and security measures, without loss of system functionality, represents a true “win-win” solution for everyone. ”

About priv-ID (www.priv-id.com)

priv-ID B.V. offers world-class multi-modal private biometric software (priv-IDcard) that make your identity application anonymous, scalable and low-cost. priv-ID combines advanced cryptography, signalprocessing and error-correction technologies to offer fast and convenient biometric Identity Card solutions based on completely anonymous and revocable identifiers. No fuss, no function creep, no compromise. priv-ID B.V. was founded in 2008 as a spin-out company of Philips Electronics and is based at the High Tech Campus, Eindhoven, the Netherlands

About Prime Technology Ventures (www.ptv.com)

Prime Technology Ventures is a leading venture capital firm focusing on investing in European companies in the information technology and related industries and leverages its capital, experience and contacts to actively guide them into global category leaders. The firm has invested in companies in the Benelux countries, United Kingdom, Finland and Sweden. From its offices in Amsterdam and Cambridge the independent partnership manages over 270 million euro in committed capital.

Utrecht, NL September 8, 2009

About WCC

WCC is a global technology leader in search and match software. Its ELISE matching system delivers the best possible identity matching results using multiple biometrics and/or biographic criteria. WCC’s core competencies are in Identity Matching (biometrics), HR staffing and other markets. For more information, please visit: http://multimodalfusion.com

About priv-ID

priv-ID B.V. is the leading provider for biometric identification software that guarantees the true anonymity and privacy for the user. priv-ID is set to accelerate the rapidly growing biometrics markets by resolving the worldwide concerns of privacy, non-renewability and cost of deployment. priv-ID B.V. is a spin-out company Royal Philips Electronics and is based at the High Tech Campus, Eindhoven, the Netherlands. For more information, please visit: www.priv-id.com

priv-ID B.V., High Tech Campus 9, 5656 AE Eindhoven, The Netherlands, Tel.: +31 (0)40 7513918, E-mail: info@priv-id.com, website: www.priv-id.com

About priv-ID

priv-ID B.V. is the leading provider for biometric identification software that guarantees the true anonymity and privacy for the user. In contrast to conventional security, priv-ID’s BioHASH software transforms biometric data into highly compact and anonymous codes from which the original biometrics can never be reverse-engineered! priv-ID’s solution makes it possible to securely store private biometric templates in identity documents and passports without the need to use Extended Access Control. This enables biometric verification with traditional identity documents in the private and public sector, to effectively combat identity fraud. priv-ID is a spin-out company Royal Philips Electronics and is based at the High Tech Campus, Eindhoven, the Netherlands.

About Daon

Daon is a leading provider of identity assurance software products focused on meeting the needs of governments and commercial organizations worldwide. Daon supports customers and system integrators in building enterprise solutions requiring the highest level of security, performance, scalability, reliability and privacy. Daon’s COTS products are scalable, flexible and proven in the most challenging real-world environments and have been selected to secure more than 350 million identities around the globe. The Daon product suite covers every aspect of identity management from pre-enrollment and identity proofing to enrollment, multimodal capture, adjudication, credentialing and provisioning; and provides a technology agnostic approach which gives leverage to the customer.

Essen, Germany, April 15, 2010

secunet’s biomiddle and Golden Reader Tool are now offered with priv-ID’s BioHASH solution fully integrated. priv-ID’s BioHASH enables biometric verification in a privacy preserving manner. The combined secunet and priv-ID solution is a very powerful tool to combat identity fraud in the public and private sector. On May 4 and 5, priv-ID will demonstrate the secunet/BioHASH eID/ePassport solution at the ID world conference in Abu Dhabi.

In ePassports and eID’s it is now possible to store the BioHASH fingerprint information in the freely accessible DataGroup13. This enables a biometric identity check with the ePassports and eID’s also in the public and private sector. BioHASH can be used as an ICAO-compliant and backward-compatible enhancement of the Extended Access Control (EAC) protection in ePassports and eID’s, making biometric verification possible for secondary purposes. Beyond the use in ePassports and eID’s, the BioHASH© fingerprint information can be stored in a central database in a privacy respecting manner. This makes it possible to have database related applications like biometric payments in countries where legislation and regulation around storage of biometric information is very strict.

“With priv-ID we are able to show our customers a powerful solution to deploy biometrics without compromising on privacy,” said Marco Breitenstein, Head of Business unit Biometrics and eID of secunet, “In addition to enhanced privacy, this opens new possibilities for using biometrics in the private and public sector and effectively combat identity fraud.”

“The combination of our private biometric solution BioHASH© and secunet’s biomiddle platform offers a reliable and proven solution for ePassports, identity documents and biometric payment deployments.” said Michiel van der Veen, CEO of priv-ID.

About secunet

secunet is one of Germany’s leading providers of superior IT security. In a close dialogue with its customers – enterprises, public authorities and international organisations – secunet develops high-capacity products and excellent IT security solutions. Thus, secunet not only keeps IT infrastructures secure for its customers, but also achieves intelligent process optimisation and creates sustainable added value. At secunet, more than 270 experts focus on issues such as cryptography (SINA), e-government, business security and automotive security with the aim of always being one step ahead of the competition in terms of quality and technology. secunet puts special emphasis on long-term relationships with its customers and on an atmosphere based on partnership. This is impressively shown by the security partnership with the Federal Republic of Germany that has been in effect since 2004.

priv-ID B.V., High Tech Campus 9, 5656 AE Eindhoven, The Netherlands, Tel.: +31 (0)40 7513918, E-mail: info@priv-id.com, website: www.priv-id.com