It certainly is the age of information technology. Life seemingly is impacted by the conveniences that information technology is creating with every passing day, month and year. And it is happening at different levels.
The advances of IT in the security
industry has enabled companies the world over to more effectively guard and protect their premises, staff, sensitive data and their intellectual capital from the hands of competitors and industrial espionage.
At the forefront of technological advances in the security industry is biometrics. Over the years biometrics and more specifically fingerprint readers have been tested and proven to be more effective and efficient than conventional token-based security systems. Until recently, biometrics was primarily used by large corporates and government departments in high-end security systems. Today however, the benefits of biometrics are being enjoyed in a wide variety of markets. In particular schools and educational institutions are realising that biometrics is the ideal tool to manage the identity of large numbers of students, requiring access to a variety of services and facilities.
Traditional student management systems in schools make use of student cards with barcodes or magnetic strips whilst more recent systems use smartcards with imbedded electronic chips. These systems do solve some problems experienced with student management, but many others still exist. For example:
Student cards, whilst issued with the intention to be unique to a particular student, are still open to misuse and abuse. Even when combining a PIN number with the student card, it still allows for abuse, albeit more deliberate and planned abuse.
Student cards are often lost, borrowed or stolen which jeopardises security and means that some students can gain access to areas and services that they are not entitled to.
The administration and logistics factors required to maintain and support a card-based system can be extremely high due to the fraudulent use of the system.
The combination of card plus biometrics in an academic environment provides the most ideal solution to the above-mentioned problems. In particular, fingerprint biometrics is seen as the ideal choice because of its speed, accuracy, flexibility and proven position in the world market.
Biometric-based card systems ensure that only the authorised owner of the card is able to transact with the card. In this case the biometric fingerprint template is stored inside the chip on the smartcard and is used in a one-to-one comparison against the presented finger.
In this way the functional areas on a campus including: admission, staff and student attendance, staff payroll, examination attendance, library and laboratory access, canteen management and hostel access can be secured and administered accurately and efficiently.
The registration of student biometric data is a simple once-off process. In addition, the storage of a central biometric database allows academic institutions to protect against duplicate entries in the system. This process is known as duplicate record search and is a powerful tool in ensuring the integrity of a student database.
Security, which is a major consideration for schools, colleges and universities, is greatly improved as only registered staff and students can gain access to the institution's premises and facilities.
Attendance monitoring will also be more accurate as students will not be able to 'buddy clock' for each other and will actually need to attend lectures and classes to maintain a good attendance record. Of key importance is the ability to eliminate examination fraud, by positively identifying students before they sit for an examination.
The ever-increasing capacity and flexibility of smartcard technology also means that a single biometric student card can be used for multiple vending type applications in an academic environment. Typical vending applications include canteen payments and photocopying services.
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