Tag Archives: Biometrics

Exploring Logical Access Control with PIV cards

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Looks like convergence projects are in the limelight… lately I noticed a lot of interests on enabling the use of common credentials for securely accessing physical and logical resources.  Although we find most convergence projects are targeted at the enterprise level but there are serious minds working on using smartcard based PKI credentials for supporting citizen-scale projects (I regret that… Read more »

Java Card 3.0: Deploying and Running "Web applications" on Smartcard.

Java Card technology has been a passion of mine for so long and I always tried my best to keep updated on Smart card technologies…… not just because of my role at Sun, I did get several opportunities to work closely with citizen-scale Java Card deployments with multiple National ID, eID/ICAO, US DoD/CAC, PIV/FIPS-201 cards and related Identity management projects.  It is always been quite adventurous everytime to experience a card issuance… Read more »

Biometrics based Encryption & Digital Signatures ?

Just read this interesting research paper published by Prof. Bobby Tait and Prof. Basie von Solms of the University of Johannesburg (South Africa), explains how a person’s biometric fingerprints/Iris scans can be used as a protocol to perform private key based encryption and digital signatures.  The paper describes a biometric middleware infrastructure (BioVault) which requires users to performs biometric authentication for generating or retrieving a random… Read more »

Fortifying Sun Ray Desktops with Biometric Authentication

Lately I’ve been franctically busy with couple of my ISVs and an SI helping them out on a Citizen-scale National Healthcare Identity Infrastructure solution pilot for one of the populous countries in the Atlantic region – Sorry I cannot disclose the country’s name to abide their privacy laws and to protect my job :-). The solution aims to deliver an Unified Desktop/Voice Infrastructure via Sun Ray… Read more »

Biometric adoption expected to grow "triple" between 2008-2012, despite economic downturn !

Lately, Biometric identification and authentication technologies gaining unprecedented importance in government organizations across the globe as evidenced in the US by introduction of HSPD-12, HSPD-24 and and other countries complying with ICAO requirements for biometric-enhanced machined readable traveller documents (MRTDs) / ePassports providing support for Facial/Fingerprint identification for travelers passing through airports, security-sensitive locations and ensuring protection against identity thefts…. Read more »

Here you go..OWASP Hartford !

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Last night, I had the opportunity to present at an OWASP event @Hartford, CT.  James McGovern, a long-time buddy of mine organized this event at one of the Hartford skyscrappers – What a great view !  I had contributed code artifacts to OWASP projects before, but it was the first time I had a chance to attend an OWASP event…. Read more »

Massachusetts 201 CMR 17.00 imposes "Protection of Personal Identity Information".

A month ago, I had a chance to meet with John Beveridge (Deputy State Auditor at Office of the State Auditor of Massachusetts) at an ISACA event in Boston. During a casual chat, he briefly mentioned about the upcoming regulation highlighting “Mass 201 CMR 17.00 – Massachusetts Standards for Data Protection of Personal Information”  and it’s compelling security requirements ! … Read more »

Provisioning/De-Provisioning Biometric credentials and Convergence of Physical/Logical Access Control Systems

It’s been a while, I had been hearing a lot of talk about unified biometric credentials and using then for convergence of physical and logical access control systems – Like me, you might’ve heard a lot of high-level marketing or analyst’s stuff … so here is some realities from my hands-on experience ! Frankly, there is no magic silver bullet… Read more »

Stronger Authentication with Biometric SSO (Using OpenSSO and BiObex).

I had been involved with multiple Biometric ISV providers and its integration with Sun technologies particularly OpenSSO, IdM, Sun Rays and Solaris. I also had the opportunity to deploy Biometric solutions to few govt organizations that starts with “D” and “N”. Believe it or not…we have few of them in production. Now, getting down to the specifics – Putting it… Read more »

Match-to-SmartCard PKI and Biometric authentication.

A picture is worth a thousand words. This picture is intended for a friend of mine (a doubting Thomas), who did’nt believe my latest work on enabling a multi-factor authentication based “Web SSO” that uses on-card credentials (PIN + PKI + Biometrics) using PIV card. This solution is currently tested to run Sun OpenSSO Enterprise 8 (running on Glassfish v2),… Read more »