Iridian Technology to Detect Against Iris-Printed Contact Lenses

MOORESTOWN, N.J. -- Iridian Technologies, the world leader in the development and commercialization of iris recognition technology, today announced that it has developed two new countermeasures designed to detect contact lenses imprinted with iris patterns.

Iridian has experienced accelerating adoption of its technology over the past two years with installations in the Canadian CANPASS program, the US/Canada NEXUS Air program, the United Arab Emirates and other Middle Eastern countries and immigration programs in the Netherlands, the UK, Germany, Australia, and Japan. Furthermore, deployments using Iridian technology are increasingly exceeding one million enrolled users. "As the breadth and depth of our deployments is increasing, the need to offer enhanced countermeasures increases," said Frank Fitzsimmons, President and CEO of Iridian Technologies. "We designed these countermeasures specifically to address the growing number of watch list deployments."

Iridian has implemented two approaches for printed contact lens countermeasures. The first recognizes commercially available printed contact lenses. The second is a countermeasure that evaluates the iris image and detects the presence of any generic printed contact lens based on its features. The introduction of the new printed contact lens countermeasures significantly reduces the ability of bad actors to avoid being detected if they are enrolled in the database.

Iridian countermeasures are characterized by their penetration rate and false alarm rate. The penetration rate is the rate at which a threat goes undetected by a countermeasure. The false alarm rate is the rate at which a countermeasure falsely detects a threat when none is present. "Our countermeasures are designed to optimize the penetration rate and false alarm rate," said Ulf Cahn von Seelen VP of Algorithms and Research. "The goal is to create a countermeasure which further enhances security while maintaining the extraordinary convenience of iris recognition."

Iridian has recently strengthened its countermeasures team and continually evaluates various threats and develops countermeasures to maintain the integrity, reliability and security of iris recognition.

(c) 2005 Business Wire