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You may not have thought about anything besides passwords as they have become ingrained into our interactions with the web and our various accounts online, but there are some nifty methods out there. These login methods come right out of Star Trek!

Have you ever thought about logging into your Facebook account using facial recognition, fingerprints or voice activation?

Biometrics such as the color of your iris or the patterns of your fingerprints offers a stronger way of account login. It certainly would take more time for a hacker to steal a fingerprint than crack a password because they would have to physically lift it off a surface that you had touched. Many of these hackers come from all over the world, so they would not have direct access to your day-to-day life where you leave your fingerprints everywhere.

So, by adopting biometrics, you are making it harder for them to access your account thereby, creating another hurdle increasing the chance that your data stays safe.

As SecuGen (est. 1998), a reputable and well-known U.S. fingerprint reader manufacturer, sells many fingerprint readers that conform to standards such as FIPS 201 and ISO 19794-4 which ensures that fingerprint images are read accurately and stored with the utmost care. Specifically with FIPS 201, it was established by the federal government for authentication of their employees, so you know that these devices are going to be much harder to crack.

Hitachi (est. 1910) is a household electronics conglomerate based in Tokyo, Japan that is focused on developing solutions to place the world on a positive track towards solving wide spread problems such as climate change and health concerns. It offers both the Hitachi H-1 Finger Vein Scanner along with the Hitachi VeinID Five Windows Password Replacement to login to your Windows workstation. Hitachi has a long history of working in developing camera equipment, laptops and TVs. As a result with these fingerprint scanners and their imaging capabilities, you can be assured that their passion for electronics and the quality of their products show up here.

Kensington Computer Products Group (est. 1981) is well known for their physical laptop security with the ubiquitous Kensington lock showing up today in many laptop products. With a headquarters in Burlingame, California, it knows a thing or two about logical access and offers fingerprint readers in addition to physical locks to ensure that an intruder would not only be unable to steal your physical laptop but be prevented from accessing your data on your hard drive.

Identos (est. 2014) is a German-based cybersecurity company that is focused on identity access management for mobile devices from organizations in industries such as government, healthcare and financial services. Their products include smart card readers and fingerprint readers for easy MFA (multi-factor authentication) applications.

By creating an extremely expressive facial expression, it will make it much harder for a hacker to copy that photo to use as a login tool. Given how long passwords have been around and the many tools at a hacker’s disposal, they would rather use a tried-and-true method such as password cracking than make the attempt to test out the waters with biometric methods.

Facial recognition works through the front-facing camera that is on your phone or web camera on your desktop. With this facial scan, it recognizes certain key aspects of your face to form a better identity of who you are. This depends on the implementation used, but it could be from multiple pictures captured at different angles. This is then stored for future reference to unlock your phone. You are then prompted to place your face in front of the camera the next time your try to login.

Voice recognition uses the unique voice that all people have and tries to identify the person on the other end. Given that everyone has a unique voice based off phonetics and morphology , this will make it much harder to crack. In addition, wide spread adoptability will be much easier given that many people are used to interacting with voice activated systems such as smart speakers such as Alexa and Google Home.

To use this, a microphone is all that is needed which is included on all smartphones today. A few situations were this would be ideal include:

Want to use the minutiae (patterns) on your fingerprint to login to your computer at work? We offer fingerprint readers from SecuGen that will provide a strong peace of mind for you to keep your documents away from any intruders at work or wherever you decide to work. You might be wondering if this person could use a fake finger with your fingerprint as a model or on Scotch Tape. However, the concern over fake fingers is also not to be worried about as there is Fake Finger Rejection which will detect silicone or 2D/3D models of fingers and their fingerprints. If you are leaning more towards Kensington products, they also have your back with an extremely low False Rejection Rate (FRR) of 3% and a False Acceptance Rate (FAR) of 0.002% meaning that you will not be locked out of your account while also making sure that unwelcome guests are kept at bay.

Adhering to standards set by the FBI, FIPS 201 and FAP 20 Mobile ID requirements while accounting for difficult fingers using a proprietary Smart Capture technology, SecuGen is prepared to handle secure authentication. They also have their SEIR biometric technology which is also included with their advanced optical sensors which allow for these fingerprint readers to be perfect for PIV smart card applications. With encryption technologies used to store fingerprint data, you will not have to worry about the templates being intercepted and reengineered.

All of this sounds great in theory, but where can you use this? These readers can be used in physical access control, POS systems, employee attendance and many more applications. They are all fantastic for MFA or multi-factor authentication for both server-based and cloud-based applications in use at your business which include Dropbox, GitHub and the Google Suite depending on the fingerprint reader in question. That along with securing email, web browsing and document access and signing.

Ultimately, SecuGen’s fingerprint readers are durable, reliable and are easily usable by anyone looking to secure their business regardless of their finger’s condition and offer the comfort of an ergonomic design. All are very quick and have a verification time of less than five seconds .

Overall, most of the fingerprint readers that we offer will work with major operating systems such as Windows, macOS and Linux and work via the USB interface. SecuGen’s fingerprint readers are compatible mainly with Windows, Linux and Android operating systems whereas Hitachi offers Windows support only. For mobile fingerprint readers, be aware that the models will be specified to the operating system that they are compatible with whether that be Android or iOS.

Some of these readers also incorporate a smart card reader with the fingerprint reader leading to an easy implementation of MFA for your workstation. The models listed below will fulfill what you are looking for.

Smart Card Reader/Fingerprint Reader Combination:

Readers We Sell:

Fingerprint Sensors We Sell:

For portability and use with mobile devices such as smartphones and laptops, take a look at the fingerprint readers below!

Mobile Readers We Sell:

For even more secure Windows login compared with fingerprint reading, take a look at finger vein scanning which is able to take a picture of the blood veins within your hands. No two blood veins are the same, and it will only work with a live hand. It is almost impossible to replicate these vein patterns given that they are internal and that the templates which are used to verify the veins are encrypted and unable to be reverse engineered.

Unlike fingerprint reading, this is completely contactless as the finger does not need to touch the glass bed in order to verify your identity. It is extremely fast to authenticate with a less than 2 second time window.

It is perfect in applications that require high levels of security such as in financial institutions and physical access control for those in charge of valuable financial assets such as bullion and high-value bearer bonds. It is also great for logical access control on Windows-based workstations with Windows 7 or higher versions.

Hardware/Software We Sell:

If you are located in the U.S. and want to start implementing a finger print authentication scheme for your business then we have a wide array of options from SecuGen along with portable options from Identos and Kensington. We carry even more product from SecuGen including their embedded readers for OEMs such as the SecuGen U10 USB Fingerprint Sensor and their classic iD-USB SC/PIV Fingerprint Readers. With the security and ease-of-use of fingerprint reading, robustness of security protocols that they adhere to and the quickness of authentication, you can trust SecuGen to secure your physical and logical assets. We a certified distributor of SecuGen products among other hardware manufacturers such as Identos and Kensington meaning that we are trusted to properly support you on your journey with these amazingly, advanced fingerprint readers.

If you would like to learn more about our biometric hardware and software selection then feel free to give us a call at 858-622-2004 or email us at sales@txsystems.com , and we would be happy to help.