Bio-Plugin is targeted primarily to application developers, and provides for them a biometric (fingerprint) authentication platform that they can integrate within their applications. According to the vendor, the platform can utilize any vendor-independent fingerprint algorithm and supported hardware devices, enabling the developer to avoid low-level integration efforts with a particular device or SDK.

The platform operates by storing fingerprint pattern data--not the actual fingerprint itself--in its data stores (support is provided for any SQL compliant DB); data that can be used to verify or authenticate an individual but that does not allow the fingerprint image itself to be recreated. Template data is transmitted and stored using encryption for further protection. Products support either verification (1:1) or authentication (1:n) or both, depending on the product version; and the vendor states that the platform is capable of comparing 25,000 records per second in an optimized environment.

Other features of the system include:

- Multi-threaded servers

- Compression algorithms for the reduction of stored records

- Tolerant to fingerprint rotation/translation

- Fingerprint enrollment in 0.2 - 0.4 seconds

Multiple versions of the Bio-Plugin application are provided, depending on the developer's application needs and scale.

Bio-Plugin Appserver is a server-based platform for integration into Windows-based software. It is compatible with WAN and Citrix environments.

Bio-Plugin Webserver is targeted to Web-based applications; it is accessed via a Web services based interface. It works with IIS, Apache, WebSphere, Oracle, and WebLogic.

Finally, Bio-Plugin Parallel Server is for larger database environments, where multiple distributed and balanced nodes can process fingerprint identification scanning in parallel.

New to the Bio-Plugin line is the vendor's Bio-AI technology, which seeks to reduce false rejections by way of dynamic profiling algorithms that learn about a user's particular fingerprint each time it is scanned. The result, according to the vendor, is that over time the need for a user to perfectly align their fingers during scans is reduced, and thus the corresponding false reject rate is reduced.

Bio-Plugin is available now. Contact M2SYS Technology for further information.