SecuGen Fingerprint Algorithms Receive NIST/MINEX Certification

SANTA CLARA, CA /PRNewswire/ -- SecuGen is pleased to announce that its biometric fingerprint algorithms have received Minutiae Interoperability Exchange (MINEX) Certification from the National Institute of Standards and Technology and are compliant with the Federal Information Processing Standard (FIPS 201) and Homeland Security Presidential Directive HSPD-12.

Biometrics, and especially fingerprint recognition, is rapidly becoming a required technology in many U.S. government initiatives for increased security, such as the Personal Identity Verification (PIV) program that would require all federal employees and contractors to use biometrics-enabled ID cards to access all federal facilities and information systems. NIST developed FIPS 201 to define the PIV requirements as a response to HSPD-12, which mandates a government-wide standard for more secure and reliable forms of identification that will impact millions of users across all federal agencies. Other federal programs, such as the Transportation Security Administration's Registered Traveler and Transportation Worker Identification Credential programs require alignment with the PIV / FIPS 201 standard. These are just two examples of the federal government's broad commitment to using commercially available biometric technologies that comply with established standards and to ensuring they conform to requirements through certification processes such as those provided by MINEX and the FBI.

"We are extremely pleased to receive MINEX Certification for our ANSI 378 extraction and matching algorithms, which our Santa Clara, CA, algorithm development team has done an excellent job of improving," says Dan Riley, SecuGen vice president of software development. "SecuGen has grown a lot over recent years, both in our engineering expertise and our field deployment experience, and this has allowed us to quickly adopt emerging biometric standards and produce compliant algorithms, software, and optical fingerprint sensor technology that maintain a high level of quality, accuracy, and performance."

The Ongoing MINEX test program has certified that SecuGen's fingerprint algorithms yield false nonmatch rates that are significantly lower than required, with a greater than 99% confidence level, for over 125,000 genuine comparisons, which is an atypically large sample size used to ensure statistical significance.

Jeff Brown, SecuGen vice president of sales and marketing adds, "Many of our partners supply SecuGen fingerprint technology based systems and products to the federal government. MINEX certification is essential to their ability to participate in the many federal programs that are ongoing under HSPD-12 and FIPS 201. We are very excited about our ability to provide these partners with high-quality and affordable technology components that will enable them to successfully deliver competitive compliant systems and products.

"I am very excited about the opportunity to license our MINEX-certified algorithms to further enable and support interoperability and open the market for large-scale, mass-adoption of biometrics," comments Won Lee, SecuGen president and CEO. "We have a rich and long heritage of designing and producing fingerprint hardware and software that meet our stringent quality standards that have exceeded the industry's expectations. In order to expand our reach of service to the government market, we will continue to aggressively pursue compliance with FIPS 201, SP 800-76, MINEX, and FBI requirements for the PIV program, as well as a wide range of other federal programs that are adopting these new standards. I also believe very strongly that business and industry will also adopt these standards as they provide government-certified assurance of high image quality and excellent template extraction and matching performance."

Inquiries for licensing SecuGen's algorithms are invited, and interested parties may contact us at [email protected].

About SecuGen
SecuGen is the world's leading provider of advanced, optical fingerprint-recognition technology, products, tools, and platforms for physical and information security. SecuGen designs and develops proprietary and patented fingerprint sensors and algorithms and markets OEM components, developer kits, application software and fingerprint peripherals worldwide for a wide range of applications.

SecuGen is a registered trademark of SecuGen Corp. in the U.S. and other countries.