Jeff Brown from SecuGen on the impact of COVID, cybersecurity trends and an innovative new sensor
SecuGen is a leading player in the field of fingerprint biometrics with decades of history; Because of this, Jeff Brown, the company’s VP of Sales, is a familiar face to many in the biometrics industry. With his and SecuGen’s extensive expertise, many will be interested in getting his analysis and insights from this latest interview with FindBiometrics founder Peter O’Neill.
The conversation spanned many areas, with a focus on COVID-19 and the sweeping changes the pandemic has brought about. Concerns about touching common surfaces have had an undeniable impact on the fingerprint biometrics industry, and Brown approaches the problem with an open mind. And while the pandemic continued to challenge everyone in the biometrics industry, Brown also talks about some significant achievements for SecuGen in recent months, including the integration of a SecuGen sensor into a medical cart product, the introduction of the Unity 20 Serial fingerprint sensor, and the Development of a groundbreaking new non-contact sensor solution that will soon hit the commercial market.
Read the full interview with Jeff Brown, VP Sales, SecuGen:
Peter O’Neill, Founder, FindBiometrics: Everything in our industry is moving so fast, and I want to start with an update on a big topic. When we last spoke, you and I discussed the impact of the pandemic on the use of fingerprint biometrics. Now that vaccines provide immunity to the public and the coronavirus doesn’t primarily spread via surface transmission, how have you changed attitudes towards fingerprint recognition in the past few months?
Jeff Brown, Vice President Sales, SecuGen: This is a big topic, Peter, and related to that question, I’d like to tell you about an exciting new product that we’d like to release, but let me save this news for later. Many of the changes we have seen from the pandemic will be long-lasting. COVID-19 has forced many people to work from home. Will they return to the office? Yes, many will, but not all. I think a lot of people like this change. Companies need less office space and fewer utilities. It’s a money saver. Workers like to commute from their bedroom to their home office. So while there is and will be a return to office work, it will likely be incomplete. We see the hybrid approach becoming part of the new normal.
The same is true, in my opinion, of the biometrics industry. Initially there was a pronounced trend towards contactless biometrics such as face recognition. As you mentioned, the scientists told us that COVID-19 is not transmitted through contact with surfaces. Even so, people want to be safe and are looking for ways to stay extra safe. Although many people are now less afraid of touching a fingerprint sensor, some are still concerned. This will take a long time to change and may never return to what it used to be.
I think it’s important to point out that there has always been a market segment that has been sensitive to this issue. We have been asked about cleaning the surface of fingerprint readers for many years. At some point we considered giving our sensors an antimicrobial coating. This sensitivity to the shared use of fingerprint readers was previously only observed in certain regions and market segments. Now, of course, it’s almost universal.
FindBiometrics: We recently reported on the integration of the U20-A fingerprint sensor from SecuGen into the StatSafe medical cart from Phoenix. We’ve seen a lot of excitement around the health biometrics market. What makes working with health-oriented partners like Phoenix, as a company that focuses so heavily on working with developers and integrators, unique and why do you choose to work with SecuGen?
SecuGen: Well, healthcare, like banking, is one of those industries where people demand absolute accountability. You don’t want to spend medication to the wrong patient any more than you want to spend money to the wrong customer. You want to make sure that the person supplying this medicine is the qualified healthcare professional who should be doing it.
SecuGen is organized to work with hardware OEMs such as Phoenix LTC in healthcare and other industries. Integrating a fingerprint sensor into a hardware product is a similar task regardless of the industry. Every day we focus on developing and delivering the products, tools and technical support OEMs need and expect to integrate our products. We have over 20 years of experience working with hardware OEMs as this has been a focus of our business from the start.
FindBiometrics: SecuGen launched its new ultra-compact Unity 20 Serial in April. Its functions – such as on-device matching, liveness detection, its small size – make it extremely flexible in terms of possible integrations. I can imagine it works well in retail and corporate focus scenarios. What applications is this new solution best suited for?
SecuGen: Peter, the Unity 20 Serial story is really a story about the Unity sensor line. Years ago we sold a fingerprint sensor that was attached to a separate circuit board with a cable. The board would provide the intelligence to perform the fingerprint match and return a pass or fail. These boards typically had a serial interface. We have made this board smaller and unified it with the sensor. Hence the product line name Unity. In addition, we have designed Unity sensors to have multiple possible interfaces in addition to serial ones to meet the needs of the end user or application.
The Unity fingerprint sensor circuit board makes Unity more powerful than a normal USB sensor. Unity offers a complete Linux programming environment and integrated software with which you can register, match, store and manage fingerprints on the device. All biometric activities are included in the device without any dependency on the host. The Unity 20 Serial is our first sensor with an RS232 interface, which is ideal for so-called “old” systems such as POS machines that only have serial interfaces. However, as I said earlier, the Unity line is the real story, and the different types of connectivity are like each character. The Unity 20 Bluetooth reader is based on this line, as is our Unity 20 USB sensor. They all have the same core sensor and board, but communicate with the outside world in their own way. There will be other Unity readers as well. The adaptability of the Unity line makes it not only a powerful development tool for our partners, but also for SecuGen. It gives us the ability to develop and deliver a wide variety of products quickly and efficiently.
FindBiometrics: Jeff, you’ve been in this business for a long time. What changes do you see for the biometrics industry in the next year or two, if any?
SecuGen: Well, Peter, as Mark Twain said, “It is difficult to make predictions, especially about the future.” Of course, nobody can predict the details exactly, but the rough outlines can sometimes be distinguished in advance. In response to the ransomware attacks against US companies and infrastructure, the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) and the FBI recently issued recommendations to critical infrastructure owners. One of these recommendations is to implement two-factor authentication for so-called OT and IT networks, which are a company’s information technology (IT) networks and operational technology (OT) networks.
This action may not have stopped the last attack. Nonetheless, the US government seems serious about encouraging an increased focus on locking down this country’s critical infrastructure. This will also resonate outside of the United States.
As your readers well understand, there are many ways to implement two-factor or multi-factor authentication, but biometrics is one of the strongest methods, and it is much more secure than PINs or passwords. I believe this government push will help accelerate the adoption of biometrics here and around the world. I think our industry has yet another chance to respond to a very serious challenge from various malicious actors around the world.
FindBiometrics: What can we expect from SecuGen in the second half of 2021?
SecuGen: We actually have a lot in the pipeline. I don’t want to reveal everything, but in the near future you will see a FAP 30 fingerprint reader and sensor, the Hamster Pro 30 and U30 respectively. We are working on a FIDO 2 authenticator based on the Unity line. But the new product that seems to be generating the most buzz is the Hamster Air, which we are currently releasing.
The Hamster Air is a contactless fingerprint reader. It is a contactless USB single finger reader. There are some touchless or contactless 4-finger devices on the market, but they are very, very expensive. Not the kind of thing you could buy for your laptop unless you want to invest thousands of dollars just on the fingerprint reader. The Hamster Air has a suggested retail price of just over $ 100. Even at this low price, we can maintain SecuGen’s quality standards as with all of our products.
At the beginning of the pandemic, like many others, I wore surgical gloves to the supermarket and wiped off my purchases when I got home. You’ll be happy to know that I don’t wipe the groceries away anymore. In March 2020 it occurred to me that people want non-contact biometrics. It was a pretty easy call. So I asked our VP of Engineering, Dan Riley, if he thought this was feasible. In 24 hours he had built a model of a contactless reader. Dan demonstrated it to our management team and our CEO, Won Lee, immediately saw the potential. So we asked our hardware engineers to see what they could come up with. You worked quickly and came up with a fantastic product. It’s amazing what our engineering team has achieved in such a short time. I am not aware of any other product on the market like the Hamster Air. Our partners are enthusiastic and can hardly wait to be able to offer this to their customers.
