Capturing fingerprints in non-ideal circumstances.
The mining industry in South Africa is riddled with complexities. It is highly regulated with safety and security being stringently monitored and reviewed to ensure preventable loss of life and product. It also offers the opportunistic and desperate an attractive, if illegal, temptation. According to government, illegal mining costs the country up to R5bn per annum. The unnecessary fatalities cannot be measured.
Access to the mine and designated restricted areas needs to be tightly managed, and the location of each staff member needs to be accounted for throughout shifts. Many mines do operate access control and time and attendance systems, but to date no one solution has offered true reliability coupled with high performance.
“Card and fob systems lack strong security and can be compromised by something as simple as a lost or shared token,” explains Dave Crawshay-Hall, CTO at Brand New Technologies. “While biometric systems offer greater security, many of the existing biometric readers on the market remain unreliable, presenting too many false reads, and often can only be used effectively within stable environments (ie: not too hot or cold, indoors, clean fingers). Using multispectral sensors ensures that high quality images are captured, even when fingerprint ridges are hard to distinguish due to genetics, age, dirt, finger placement or environmental conditions.
“Following on from the success of the revolutionary multispectral imaging (MSI) Lumidigm fingerprint scanners in South Africa, we are now pleased to launch the IEVO biometric access control device, the ideal integrated product designed to solve these existing issues. Brand New’s new IEVO access control reader incorporates a multispectral imaging (MSI) fingerprint reader, which has particular application in the tough mining environment,” says Crawshay-Hall.
The MSI reader is capable of accurately and reliably capturing a fingerprint image under any circumstance including wet, dry, dirty and scarred fingers. It offers high throughout speeds and has been specifically designed to easily integrate into any existing card and fob system by using the original manufacturer’s controllers.
“This ease of integration means the mines can quickly implement the solution, thereby improving security almost immediately. It is also vandal proof, and provides the industry’s best live finger detection to protect against fake and spoof fingerprints. The reader can be used indoor or externally, and can be flush or surface mounted, offering a simple and cost effective enhancement to any access control solution,” concludes Crawshay-Hall.
A video showing the IEVO device under various test conditions is available at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ryt9MAZVYfU
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