The VP-II S vascular hand scanner provided by Identica fits perfectly into our look forward for the year. This device takes biometrics to a whole new level. Before we get into the sci-fi idea of having your vascular pattern (in this case the veins and arteries in your hand) recognized by a device to gain access to restricted areas, let's talk about some of the great features of this product.

This device can be set up to carry out two functions: the physical access to restricted areas, and time and attendance functions. For physical access, the VP-II S offers support for many different types of first factor authentication, including proximity cards, smart cards and PIN numbers. Any of these first factor methods can be paired up with the vascular scan as the second factor. The system can also integrate with an already existing environment and control center, or it can be set up as a standalone control, which offers a great amount of flexibility.

For time and attendance, this product can be set up with a smart card and vascular scan to clock employees in and out with no chance of the issue of buddy punching. The installation is easy and it takes just about five minutes to install the software on a server and have the first access point up and running. After installation, enrollment is simple as well. It takes just a few seconds to get a user set up and enrolled. The software manages its own MySQL database, which also has room for adding user attributes such as contact information.

At the time of enrollment, the VP-II S takes an infrared image of the vascular pattern under the skin of the user's hand. This pattern is different for everyone and there is little chance that any two people will be alike. This is beyond a simple fingerprint scan that can be skewed by dirt, oil and debris left behind by previous users. The vascular scanner sensor is tucked up inside the device, so there is absolutely no external contact whatsoever, which makes scans accurate every time. Identica plans to take this a step further to  integrate not only with physical access, but in the future, computer and network access.
We see this as the biometrics of the future available now. The Identica vision is extending the technology to a wide variety of other biometric applications.


AT A GLANCE
What it is: A biometric hand scanner that uses vascular pattern recognition
Vendor: Identica Corporation www.identicacorp.com
Cost: Contact Identica
Innovation: Vascular technology is vastly superior to fingerprint,
retinal scans or other biometric authentication for its reliability
in all sorts of less than sterile environments
What we liked: Ease of use, implementation and ease of enrollment