Using biometrics to authenticate individual transactions and preventing secret attempts to masquerade as the user
DigitalPersona is the leading provider of biometric authentication solutions for enterprise networks, developers and consumer OEMs. Founded in 1996, the company designs, manufactures and sells flexible solutions that improve security and regulatory compliance while resolving password management problems. DigitalPersona’s fingerprint readers utilize superior optical fingerprint scanning technology to more accurately authenticate users regardless of finger placement. The company’s interoperable biometric software solutions uniquely support the industry's widest array of notebooks with fingerprint readers in addition to its own line of optical placement readers. DigitalPersona’s award-winning technology is used worldwide by over 90 million people in the most diverse and challenging environments for fingerprint authentication.
Name: Jim Fulton Age: 44 Position: VP of Marketing Popularly known as: Jim Previous jobs: Vice President of Marketing and Product Management at GreenBorder. Acting Vice President of Identity Management Marketing at Critical Path. Vice President of Product Management and Strategic Planning as well as Chief Technology Officer at Network Computing Devices (NCD). Education: Bachelors Degree in Computer Science from MIT Presentations: Various security tradeshows Family: Married with 3 children, 2 dogs, 2 guinea pigs, 1 tortoise Residence: Silicon Valley, CA Other interests: Playing with his kids and dogs, cooking Favorite Charity: The Educational Fund for his local school district
In the following interview, Jim Fulton, VP of Marketing, DigitalPersona discusses 1:1 with Rake Narang, Editor-n-chief of Info Security Products Guide, continued threats and advances made in biometrics.
Rake Narang, Editor-n-Chief - Info Security Products Guide: How are biometric solutions providing greater security to organizations and consumers? How have biometric solutions changed over the years? Jim Fulton, VP of Marketing, DigitalPersona: Biometrics are the only way to reliably link actual people to specific actions. Physical tokens, smartcards, passwords and other credentials are vulnerable to being forgotten, lost or shared whereas biometrics are not. Fingerprints, the most cost-effective and mature form of biometrics, are now becoming ubiquitous on notebook computers. In addition, fingerprints are fast and instinctively easy to use, making them ideally suited for transaction-level authentication which would otherwise be unwieldy with other forms of authentication. This enables a new level of accountability that uniquely aligns users’ need for convenience with businesses’ requirements for security.
"Biometrics growing popularity can be attributed to the ease of use, faster and greater security. DigitalPersona solutions provide real proof of presence ensuring that key digital assets can only be accessed by the actual people to whom permission is specifically granted."
Rake Narang, Editor-n-Chief, Info Security Products Guide
Rake Narang: What are the latest products and services provided by DigitalPersona? How are DigitalPersona solutions different from others?
Jim Fulton: DigitalPersona specializes in fingerprint authentication solutions that provide enhanced control, security and compliance for commercial environments and password management in consumer environments. DigitalPersona is the leading provider of fingerprint authentication software and hardware for enterprise networks, developers and consumer OEMs with over 90 million users worldwide. Our software is shipped on more notebook computers than any other vendor’s and is offered by Microsoft as the software for their fingerprint reader peripheral.
Our solutions, while horizontal in applicability, have found particular traction in the following vertical industries where the ability to link an actual person to specific actions has strong value:
Retail and Hospitality – time and attendance, fraud deterrence
Financial Services – non-repudiation and compliance
Government, Education – security and password management
Rake Narang: Will the security vendors always be playing a catch-up game with malware? How do you see the security products and services evolving 2-3 years from today?
Jim Fulton: Malware has evolved over the past 18 months from being the digital equivalent of graffiti to being professionally-written forms of theft and espionage. With strong financial motivations, online criminals will continue to escalate their attacks in order to gain access to internal systems and data. Security systems are being forced to change from focusing on detecting every threat to isolating interactions via virtualization and to preventing hijacked access through transaction-level authentication. Biometrics, particularly fingerprints, will play a key role because they are fast and instinctively easy, allowing them to be used as naturally and often has hitting an “enter” key. As a result, fingerprints are able to reliably provide “proof of presence” that ensures that important applications, files, databases, and even individual functions can only be accessed by the actual people to whom permission is specifically granted. Even if malicious code manages to evade defenses, using biometrics to authenticate individual transactions can uniquely prevent secret attempts to masquerade as the user.
All About DigitalPersona Head Office Address: 720 Bay Road, Redwood City, CA 94063 USA Founded in: 1996 CEO: Fabio Righi Public or Private: Private Number of Employees: 80 Products:
Business solutions: DigitalPersona Pro family of products
Consumer product: DigitalPersona Personal
Developer SDKs: DigitalPersona Online, DigitalPersona One Touch ID SDK, DigitalPersona One Touch for Windows SDK, DigitalPersona One Touch Linux SDK
Company’s Goals: DigitalPersona’s mission is to be the leading provider of digital identity solutions created through fingerprints. The company is well on its way towards this goal, with its fingerprint software shipped on more notebook computers than any other vendors’. DigitalPersona offers an unparalleled ability to recognize fingerprints, intuitively easy-to-use software, and server-based control and administration.
Recent Awards Won:
2007 Global Product Differentiation Innovation Award, Frost & Sullivan
