Biometric solutions and auto:time premium

Biometrics is the new buzzword in the security and time & attendance field. However, the industry faces a number of challenges to implement an acceptable working solution.

The first obstacle to overcome is user acceptance. Employees are naturally suspicious of change and reading fingerprints is a particularly contentious issue. Another major concern is the reliability of the technology. Fingerprint Scanners tend to be less reliable in industrial environments, as fingers get dirty and become impossible to register or verify. "That's why we feel the 'Hand Punch' terminal by Ingersoll-Rand provides the most reasonable and cost effective means of employee authentication"

We have tried a number of single fingerprint solutions over the years and each in their own way, have proved to be problematic. The 'Handscan' terminal however, measures the physical dimensions of the whole hand: finger thickness, length and width. Initially this seems like an unreliable method, however, over time the terminal re-measures the hand and updates the template held. This ensures that the template is current and the process is completely transparent to the end user. It is also more accepted by the end user as it has none of the stigma of fingerprint recognition.

In the past, maintenance of biometric systems have also proved to be a problem but with the addition of auto:time premium software, template management is possible. By scanning a hand at one unit, it is possible to send this to any number of additional units there may be on site. This is also extremely useful in the unlikely event of failure of a terminal. Templates are backed up onto a database within the software and can be sent down to a new unit in seconds removing problems of re-scanning all employees onto each terminal again.