By Neelima Sagar, Senior Research Analyst, Frost & Sullivan

Oliver von Treuenfels

Oliver von Treuenfels was born in Brazil and has been based in Germany for the last 10 years as the Global Sales and Marketing Director at DERMALOG Identification Systems GmbH - Germany's Number 1 company in the biometric field. It has more than 60 Governmental installations worldwide and is responsible for providing biometric security solutions for Governmental and large scale identification projects. Oliver is also fluent in several languages which include German, Portuguese and Spanish.

DERMALOG Identification Systems GmbH, based in Hamburg, is the largest German biometrics manufacturer and one of the world leaders in fingerprint biometrics. It has a high level team of scientists and IT knowledge team working continuously on new innovative products. Its product range includes highly advanced biometric border checkpoint systems, secure biometric ID cards, and the new "FingerPayment" system. The main sales markets are Germany, Europe, Latin America, the Middle East and Asia. DERMALOG has supplied more than 20,000 fingerprint scanners to the national registration offices in Germany for the new electronic passports, ID cards and permanent resident's cards, and has also supplied more than 50,000 finger scanners to national authorities in over 40 countries. The company has installed its AFIS (Automatic Fingerprint Identification System) at 60 government authorities throughout the world – they mostly use them to identify false or duplicated identities before issuing ID cards or passports. DERMALOG is also the technical partner in the REWE Group's project for fast, secure payment by fingerprint, and the partner of Wincor-Nixdorf in fitting cash machines with finger scanners ("Finger instead of PIN number"). For further information, please visit the website www.dermalog.com.

Thank you, it is a honor for us receiving this Award. A essential key factor is always the focus on customers demand. When we entered the AFIS Market 16 years ago all existing AFIS solutions where proprietary, causing dependencies, DERMALOG was this first AFIS provider who offered a standard software based solution running on conventional hardware, operating systems and databases. We offered freedom of dependencies; we focused the customer, not us.

The consolidation is happening but we want to continue being as independent as we are, this results in more flexibility towards customers' needs and wishes. The fast implementation of a biometric solution that works is what customers demand, you can offer them a bouquet of many biometric options but at the end of the day it must be affordable and it must work accurate. Fingerprints are still the most accurate choice because each citizen has 10 different fingerprints which are all unique. Last week we achieved with our DERMALOG Next Generation AFIS a matching speed of 129 Million Single Fingerprint Matches per second on one single blade with 12 core. No false match was found and all true hits came up on rank 1.

Why I should combine this very accurate and fast method with a less accurate method? Using other biometrics than fingerprints makes sense when you are not allowed or not able to take fingerprints. But when you have this option, it is still the best choice for the customer.

The Challenges differs from country to country but the usual challenge is the short time frame for implementation. But we turned specialist on that, knowing that this is a weakness of large enterprises. For example, we could deploy this year the AFIS for the Malaysian National Border control system within 4 months. We also delivered and installed more than 3.000 of our LF10 Fingerprint Live Scanners at all Border Control Post and Immigration in Malaysia in these 4 months. The system went live as scheduled on 1st of June 2011. This was a challenge, but motivated colleagues and a flexible proactive mind made it possible.

The barriers are getting smaller, the real end-user, the citizens, they are less afraid about the use of biometrics than governments expect. When Germany started collecting fingerprints for the e-Pass project with our ZF1 Live Scanner on 1st of November 2007, we observed a longer queue of citizens than on normal days, they were keen to have the new biometric secured e-Passport first. Storing Fingerprints on the new German e-ID card is not facultative, it is an option and more than 50% of the applicants prefers to have their fingerprint securing the new e-ID card. I believe they realize that the biometric technology is to protect their identity. No other person than me is able to use my document, no other person will become my identity. The fear of tracing by biometric systems for example is not justified because other technics for this purpose are available, like the cellular phones, credit cards etc.

The hurdles are elsewhere, for example patents on software are practically not workable. The competitors are sometimes bad losers, regulatory and security related hurdles are workable if we compare them with some competitor's behavior.

We have a good distribution with 66 References in 40 countries until today, being 16 in Europe, 8 in Middles East, 7 in Africa, 4 in Latin America and 5 in Asia. We are observing a growth in all regions. The last 4 years we had a continues annual growth of 20%.

Being Fingerprints still the best choice to process large databases with high accuracy the AFIS market will continue expanding and fraud attempts on the Fingerprint itself will also increase. We want to continue manufacturing Fingerprint Live Scanner capable to deliver high quality images suitable for AFIS, that means accordingly to the specifications of FBI EFTS Appendix F or the German BSI TRDPÜ Standard, but at the same time capable to distinguish real fingers from false ones. Here we have found a niche, because those Fingerprint Scanners which are offering some kind of fake finger detection until now does not comply with the above specifications and consequently they are not suitable for large scale AFIS.

We started now to provide AFIS for commercial use, for example for Banks, ATM manufacturer, market chains, large enterprises and or institutions with a large number of employees. Our solution is easy to incorporate into existing applications due to our middleware and therefore it is easy to adapt and the implementation is not expensive. For the end-user it represents more safety and more convenience. Recently we have installed our solution at a Hospital in Hamburg Germany, with more than 4.000 workstations. The end-user interface did not changed, at the moment the end-user is requested to enter username and password he only gives one fingerprint on one of our Fingerprint Live Scanner and the middleware takes over the job to identify the user via our AFIS and to process the registration in case the user has a access permission.

We believe that focusing on the specific biometric technology we are specialized on and to improve this for the advantage of our customers is the right way for further success. To focus on a bouquet of many different options to increase the bill at the end is not our aim. Being the fastest with a highest possible accuracy is already more than enough to continue growing, combining this with Fingerprint Live Scanners capable to deliver images suitable for AFIS and capable to detect fake fingers, we have all what is needed to get a trustworthy result and to ensure the uniqueness of the citizens. Of course we will integrate other technologies when it makes sense and when it is necessary or demanded, but in this case we will choose to work with specialist like us. In other words, when I go to a restaurant with a large menu I prefer to leave.

Thank you.

Neelima Sagar, Senior Research Analyst, Frost & Sullivan