Fulcrum Biometrics and SMUFS Biometrics have signed a global distribution agreement enabling Fulcrum Biometrics to sell the SMUFS line of Bluetooth and Wireless mobile fingerprint scanners.
San Antonio, Texas – March 18, 2015 – Fulcrum Biometrics, a leading international provider, distributor and integrator of biometric systems and devices, has signed a global distribution agreement with SMUFS Biometric Solutions (SBS), an Israeli company that provides biometric hardware, software and related mobile technologies. Under the agreement, Fulcrum will sell the SBS line of high quality FIPS 201/PIV Bluetooth and wireless fingerprint compact mobile scanners for iOS, Android and Windows.
With rising awareness of security breaches from using traditional username-and-password authentication, businesses and government agencies are turning to fingerprint biometrics as a more secure form of identification. Along with this trend comes the need for more portable biometric devices and software that are easy to deploy and use with off-the-shelf smartphones and tablets.
Many smartphones are equipped with fingerprint scanners for user ID – what is known as 1:1 verification or authentication, i.e. confirming that your fingerprint matches the fingerprint stored on the device. However 1:many (or 1:N) identification – comparing a single individual’s fingerprint against a large database of fingerprints from different people – is not possible using current built-in smartphone fingerprint scanners. For social services, such as vaccination programs, food distribution and shelter programs or for other applications such as customer, member or employee identification, 1:N biometric identification is required.
Fulcrum Biometrics is the developer of the FbF® mobileOne Quickdock for iOS that enables users of Apple devices to attach a fingerprint reader directly to the device. But it is not always practical – particularly in situations where many people will need to use the fingerprint scanner – to have the scanner docked to the device. SBS’s wireless technology allows for undocked fingerprint capture, so only the fingerprint reader is touched by the users.
“We have seen a lot of interest in our mobileOne docked fingerprint scanners, so it was important to us to find an undocked scanner that would meet our standards and be a great fit with our products and services,” said Ken Nosker, president of Fulcrum Biometrics. “The SBS fingerprint scanners fit the bill perfectly. Fulcrum and SBS both see tremendous growth in the mobile ID space and we have invested a lot of our resources in building secure, fast and easy-to-use biometric solutions for use with smartphones, tablets and other mobile devices,” Nosker added.
“We are pleased to have Fulcrum Biometrics as a global distributor of our Bluetooth and wireless fingerprint scanners,” said Oren Epstein, CEO of SMUFS Biometric Solutions. “Our primary focus is on the development of mobile biometric technologies, so we benefit from allowing established distributors like Fulcrum Biometrics to handle the sales and marketing for us. Fulcrum has developed a strong reputation in the industry and will be an excellent partner for us in the global biometrics market.”
Fulcrum Biometrics will sell the SBS line of universal portable, self-powered FIPS 201/PIV biometric fingerprint scanners. Both the SMUFS Bluetooth and Wifi scanner products can be used with computers or laptops as well as tablets and smartphones, and the product line includes:
- SMUFS BT RAW (Bluetooth) and SMUFS Wifi RAW – The fingerprint image in RAW (Grayscale) format is processed to enhance the quality before being encrypted and sent to the host.
- SMUFS BT WSQ and SMUFS Wifi WSQ – The fingerprint image in raw format is processed to enhance the quality and then its compressed to WSQ (FBI’s Wavelet Scalar Quantization) before being encrypted and sent to a host.
- SMUFS BT Pro and SMUFS Wifi Pro– The fingerprint image in RAW format is processed to enhance the quality and ISO/IEC 19794-2:2005 or ANSI/INCITS 378-2004 template format can be generated as per application requirement before being encrypted and sent to a host.
About SMUFS Biometric Solutions
SMUFS Biometric Solutions (SBS) was founded in 2011 by group of Israeli entrepreneurs who saw the growing potential in the mobile biometric domain. SMUFS provides biometric hardware, software and technologies that convert existing mobile phones and tablets into powerful biometric devices. SBS is thriving to provide mobile Identity verification solutions with accurate identity enrollment, identification and verification anytime, anywhere in the most cost effective manner.
About Fulcrum Biometrics
Founded in 2002, Fulcrum Biometrics is a leading provider of biometric identification technologies for enhancing identity management. Fulcrum has provided hardware and software solutions for commercial, civil and military customers in more than 90 countries worldwide. Fulcrum’s offerings include industry-leading biometric software development tools, fingerprint scanners and other biometric sensors as well as custom software development for multiple platforms, custom integration and implementation of identity management applications and access control systems. Fulcrum is the developer of the Fulcrum Biometric Framework (FbF®), a rapid biometric application deployment suite which includes the FbF bioServer, FbF LiveScan, FbF PalmVein, FbF mobileOne, FbF Listener, FbF Controls Library and FbF iOS Library.
