Air travellers have backed biometric security checks after a four-month trial of the passenger screening technology at London’s Heathrow airport.

Fingerprint and iris scans were used for screening more than 3,000 passengers who volunteered to take part in the trial on Cathay Pacific and Emirates flights to and from Dubai and Hong Kong.

The miSense trial was aimed at testing the feasibility of advanced passenger screening in the UK, which would allow the traveller’s details to be checked against various intelligence and immigration databases and ‘watch lists’ before being allowed to board a flight.

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Kicking off the 2007CIAB Febraban (Brazilian Federation of Banks), South America’s premier banking conference, Wittel, a leading integrator of contact center solutions in Brazil, today announced a partnership with PerSay, the leading provider of advanced voice biometrics solutions, to combat the rising incidence of financial fraud in Brazil.

Voice biometrics technologies take advantage of the fact that each person’s voice is a unique and unobtrusive identifier, like a fingerprint. For contact centers that support banking, telecommunications and other industries, voice biometrics proves to be a cost-effective way to enhance security and improve customer convenience.

Wittel will look for opportunities to seamlessly integrate and support PerSay’s extremely reliable text-dependent VocalPassword and text-independent, transparent FreeSpeech speaker verification products into contact center solutions for Brazil’s leading financial services and telecommunications providers.

“Wittel is committed to offering our clients the most advanced technologies available to combat fraud. PerSay’s voice biometrics solutions clearly deliver cost-effective security, increase call center efficiency, and enhance the customer experience,” said Carlos Louro, President of Wittel. “The timing of this partnership is perfect; Brazil’s leading financial and telecom providers are looking for new approaches-like voice biometrics-to reduce the incidence of fraud.”

“This is a unique opportunity for PerSay to partner with a dominant player in Brazil that can help us bring value to an emerging market here,” said Ariel Freidenberg, Executive VP, PerSay Global Sales and Development. “PerSay is well positioned to deliver simple, natural, voice-based identification and verification solutions to the broad spectrum of telecom and financial services customers in Brazil-from the average consumer to high-net-worth individuals.”

New analysis from Frost & Sullivan “European Airport Security Equipment Market: Investment Opportunities” reveals that the European airport security market earned revenues (top 47 participants) of $2.37 billion in 2005 and estimates this to reach $10.35 billion in 2010.

The European airport security market looks set for robust growth, particularly in the wake of continued terrorist threats, new European Union (EU) airport security regulations, rising passenger traffic and the increasing need to upgrade installed security equipment, as well as integrate this with newly implemented technology.

Opportunities are particularly lucrative in the biometrics and explosive detection sub-segments, where small start-up companies offering innovative technologies can expect favourable financial backing from venture capitalist firms.

“While there are over 491 airports in Europe as of March 2006, another five to six airports are currently under construction with a plan for twenty other airports to be upgraded,” notes Frost & Sullivan Financial Analyst Rani Cleetez. “In addition, the privatisation of certain European airports will necessitate better security equipment, in order to meet the latest international security standards, as well as to ensure world class airport status.”

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Iris-based biometric technology has been rolled out to the last airport in the UK government’s program to tighten immigration security.

The Iris Recognition Immigration System (Iris) at Gatwick Airport’s South Terminal lets registered passengers enter the UK without queuing to see an immigration officer at passport control.

Air travellers enrolled in the scheme can walk up to an automated barrier, look into a camera and, if the system recognises them, enter the UK.

The biometric technology works by photographing and storing a passenger’s iris patterns in a database, along with their passport details and immigration status in the UK.

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Innovative voice biometrics start-up CellMax Systems, Ltd. of Tel Aviv and Multitek Corp., S.A. of Panama City, a major provider of intelligent solutions in Central America, today announced the signing of a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) for a five-year distribution agreement to supply CellMax Systems’ identification and verification technology to the region’s rapidly growing call center sector. No value was disclosed.

CellMax Systems specializes in highly accurate identification and verification of the human voice for access control. The company’s product suite includes a range of ID management and security applications for the telecom, financial and security markets with unprecedented rates of accuracy* and tailored to individual client needs.

In targeting the call center market, the partners intend to provide improved secure voice-based e-commerce transactions over telecommunications networks. In over-network transactions, voice has shown to be the least invasive, most readily available and the only technology that can be applied over phone lines. CellMax Systems’ technology enables higher levels of identification and verification, but keeps costs low by increasing process automation, raising quality of service and reducing wait time to provide a rapid return on investment (ROI).

Multitek will serve as both local integrator and regional distributor for CellMax Systems’ technology for call/contact centers, with exclusive license in the Panamanian market, and non-exclusive activity in the neighboring markets of Costa Rica and Colombia. Multitek is the official local partner to Cisco, Polaroid, HP, Hyundai, Linux, Olympus, Sharp among others, providing technology to Panama’s burgeoning contact center industry, as well as financial institutions and security agencies.

Eran Singer, VP Sales of CellMax Systems, Ltd., today said, “Multitek is a major force in intelligent solutions provision, telephony, Internet and retail in Latin America and we are honored to join forces with them. Additionally, their active involvement in the Panama Canal Free Zone empowers our partnership with the potential to access regional markets easily.”

Daniel Bettsak, Director General of Multitek Corp., stated, “Adding CellMax Systems’ voice biometrics solution to our range of intelligent solutions means added value to our customers, raising their levels of security and controlling access to sensitive customer data at the most reasonable cost. We’re looking forward to making this solution commonplace in the Latin American contact center space – the fastest growing in the world, serving both the Spanish and English language commercial and financial markets – as well as the security agencies that protect the Panama Canal region.”