Image Quality Assurance Case Study

Case Study: Secure Access Control - Data Centres

Biometrically Enabled Secure Access at a Major Financial Institution

One of the world’s largest banks has chosen OmniPerception’s CheckPoint™ solution to provide biometric access control at its UK data centres. The step has been a strategic move aimed at raising security to the new higher levels required in modern data centres holding highly confidential information. The bank employs over 300,000 people in 84 countries.

Before being chosen, CheckPoint™ was put through its paces in a trial programme at the bank’s Canary Wharf offices in London, including comparison with an alternative biometric solution offered by a leading competitor. The bank’s main requirements were: “A biometric which could support our data centres and secure access. It had to be cost effective, future proof and therefore capable of being developed to meet our future needs.”

After successful completion of the Canary Wharf trials, OmniPerception's CheckPoint™ system was chosen as the solution which best met the bank's stringent requirements.

The bank had tried out other methods of secure access in a number of areas, often quite remote and sometimes unmanned but heavily monitored via CCTV. In these scenarios, an operator will often have to check the identity of someone seeking access manually against a database, with a need on occasion to send out a member of staff to verify an identity on the spot before access can be authorised. The bank’s senior security team wanted a better, faster, safer and more cost-effective option for the bank’s critical data centres.

CheckPoint™ from OmniPerception was chosen because it proved itself against the bank’s list of ‘must have’ criteria, including:

• Highly accurate, robust and reliable
• Cost effective
• Quick and Easy to use - Non intrusive - Natural (Described by a senior bank official as “Technically sophisticated but operationally simple”.)
• Compatible with the bank’s existing access control systems
• “Liveness test” confirmation built in (avoiding duping of the system by use of photographs)

Another key area for the bank was the CheckPoint™ unit itself - “What the user sees as they use it must be appealing. Design and attractiveness is important in gaining acceptance from users”.

CheckPoint™ provides the bank with an additional security layer; controlling access to key doors and entry points. CheckPoint™’s facial biometric functionality works with existing access cards; providing a positive identity check each time, ensuring that the correct person is in possession of the card and is genuinely entitled to gain access.