Port of Palm Beach Deploys Biometric System to Track Truckers and Other Visitors

May 24, 2005
Port is working in conjunction with Cross Match Technologies to develop a new biometric "SecurePort" visitor management program

PALM BEACH GARDENS, Fla.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--May 23, 2005--The Port of Palm Beach is working in conjunction with Cross Match Technologies to develop a new biometric "SecurePort" visitor management program. This pilot program at the fourth busiest container port in Florida and the eighteenth busiest in the continental US, is now logging entry and exit of 200 to 300 truck drivers and others visiting the Port per day with fingerprints and photographs using Cross Match Technologies' VisTrak(TM) and MV 100(TM) digital fingerprinting systems.

Similar to the Department of Homeland Security's "US-VISIT" program, which mandates the capture of photographs and fingerprints of foreign visitors to the United States at airports, and checks the data against watch databases, the Port of Palm Beach's Secure Port program also captures biometric and biographic information from visitors and checks it against a banned visitor list. The system enables the Port to have an accurate audit trail of visitors, including fingerprints, photos, time and date of arrival and departure, demographic information, company, purpose and more, and provides visitors with temporary badges. The State for Florida has a rule allowing visitors to enter the Port a maximum of five times within a 90 day period. The fingerprinting system automatically keeps track of frequency and flags any violators.

"Our new SecurePort program replaces an old paper visitor log process, making the processing of visitors three times as fast," said Carl Baker, Special Assistant to the Port Director. "In addition, we are extremely pleased with the convenience and accuracy of automating our '5 and 90' rule and the comparison against the banned list," he added.

To expedite the processing of visitors and for greater mobility, the Port also uses Cross Match's MV 100 hand held fingerprint and photograph capture system, with built in PDA, to log and transmit the data to a central database wirelessly.

"We feel the SecurePort visitor management program with Cross Match's fingerprinting solution has enhanced our security overall at the Port of Palm Beach," said Port Executive Director, Lori Baer. "We believe in biometrics and pride ourselves on being one of the first seaports in the country to implement this cutting edge system," she added.

"We are pleased to be working with one of our nation's busiest Ports on such an important biometric security program," said Ted Johnson, Cross Match Chairman and CEO. "During these days of heightened security awareness, we expect to see many other Ports adopt this technology to improve visitor tracking accuracy and speed, and to tighten seaport security in general."