SAFRAN through Sagem Securite, its wholly owned subsidiary and a world leader in ID solutions based on biometrics, today announced that it has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire the biometric business unit within Motorola Inc. (NYSE: MOT), which includes its Printrak trademark. The acquisition has been approved by Motorola and SAFRAN.

Motorola’s biometric business unit, headquartered in Anaheim, California, USA, designs, develops, integrates and maintains automated fingerprint identification systems (”AFIS”) for law enforcement, civil and commercial customers around the world. The firm serves national, state, county and municipal agencies internationally, and provides integration solutions and systems for more than 300 customers in 40 countries in North America, Europe, the Middle East and Asia.

Jean-Paul Herteman, CEO of SAFRAN said, “This acquisition enables Sagem Securite to strengthen its position in the US market for homeland security where it is already committed to offer world-class identification solutions to government, state and local markets. This acquisition is a continuation of SAFRAN’s long history of investing in the US. It is also an important step in our plan to improve our product offering, expand production in the US, and reduce costs.”

Jean-Paul Jainsky, CEO of Sagem Securite added, “Through this acquisition, Sagem Securite, its existing customers, and Motorola’s existing biometrics customers are expected to benefit from increased efficiencies and customer responsiveness from the merger of the two businesses.”

“Biometrics is a very dynamic business that we believe requires companies to specialize in the technology,” said Gene Delaney, president, Government & Public Safety, Motorola. “To best serve our customers and employees, Motorola made a judgment that we need to concentrate and lead in our area of strength - delivering best-in-class mission critical communications solutions for government, public safety and commercial customers.”

The transaction is targeted to close first quarter of 2009 at the latest and is subject to customary closing conditions and regulatory approvals.
SAFRAN, with approximately $17 billion in revenue in 2007, is an international high-technology group. SAFRAN has been operating in the U.S. for 30 years and is a world leader in a number of industrial segments, including aircraft engines through the 34-year CFM International Joint Venture with General Electric, and also supplies aircraft components used on many U.S. military platforms as well as civil aviation customers. Its largest U.S. customer is Boeing and it has significant relationships with other U.S. aerospace companies. SAFRAN operates in aerospace propulsion, aircraft equipment, defense and security.

Products incorporating SAFRAN’s technology have been used for over 20 years by the U.S. Air Force, U.S. Navy, U.S. Army, U.S. Marine Corps, U.S. Coast Guard and NASA. Representative products today include KC-135R Stratotanker C-17 Globemaster, F/A-18, F-16, F-22, V-22 and C-130. SAFRAN is party to over 100 technical assistance agreements (TAAs) and manufacturing licence agreements (MLAs), has 22 empowered corporate officials dedicated to export control and regulations and is committed to full compliance to such requirements and implements internal policies and procedures to this end.

SAFRAN has more than 57,000 employees in over 30 countries, including 3,500 employees in the U.S. with facilities and offices in 42 locations across 19 states.

It sounds crazy, but it was making a big splash in the papers not long ago.  Analysis of facial expressions could soon be used to detect whether somebody is about to commit a terrorist atrocity.

Students working on the system primarily plan to use it for human-machine interactions, by which robots would be able to detect and process human emotion.

With regards to the crime prevention aspect, graduate Abu Sayheed Sohail said “it could be used to identify suspicious movements, to draw a security agent’s attention and alert him or her to maybe take a more careful look at five or six of the people.”

Read more at Canada.com

eWeek.com has a great article on preventing fraud in financial institutions, with SocGen being the case in point, using biometric solutions.

From their conclusion:

To mitigate fraud, these banks and financial institutions need to supplement their internal controls compliance with biometric authentication. Biometrics will prevent data breaches of security

Read the rest of the article here.

Fujitsu today announced its new PalmSecure log-in kit, and mouse log in kit. The system is apparently “virtually impossible to manipulate or falsify”.

PalmSecure works by analysing the hand vein biometric. Infrared beams highlight the pattern of veins in a user’s hand, which is then digitised, encrypted, and saved as a template.

The pioneering technology is available as a USB add-on, or directly through an integrated optical mouse.

From the Fujitsu PalmSecure website:

As organizations search for more secure authentication methods for data access, physical access and other security applications, many are discovering biometrics, which has gained recognition as one of the mainstream security technologies.