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secunet and priv-ID Announce Global Collaboration

[Essen, Germany, 15 April 2010] secunet Security Networks, one of Germany’s leading specialists in the fields of biometrics and electronic ID documents (eIDs), today announced its global collaboration with priv-ID, a leader in biometric solutions that guarantee privacy and anonymity for the user. The collaboration will provide enhanced and privacy respecting biometric solutions for the eID market and private sector.

secunet’s biomiddle and the Golden Reader Tool, developed in cooperation with the German Federal Office for Information Security (BSI), are proven and widely used tools to build and roll-out biometric applications ranging from eIDs to biometric payments.

secunet’s biomiddle and Golden Reader Tool are now offered with priv-ID’s BioHASH© solution fully integrated. priv-ID’s BioHASH© enables biometric verification in a privacy preserving manner. The combined secunet and priv-ID solution is a very powerful tool to combat identity fraud in the public and private sector. On May 4 and 5, priv-ID will demonstrate the secunet/BioHASH© eID/ePassport solution at the ID world conference in Abu Dhabi.

In ePassports and eID’s it is now possible to store the BioHASH© fingerprint information in the freely accessible DataGroup13. This enables a biometric identity check with the ePassports and eID’s also in the public and private sector. BioHASH© can be used as an ICAO-compliant and backward-compatible enhancement of the Extended Access Control (EAC) protection in ePassports and eID’s, making biometric verification possible for secondary purposes. Beyond the use in ePassports and eID’s, the BioHASH© fingerprint information can be stored in a central database in a privacy respecting manner. This makes it possible to have database related applications like biometric payments in countries where legislation and regulation around storage of biometric information is very strict.

"With priv-ID we are able to show our customers a powerful solution to deploy biometrics without compromising on privacy," said Marco Breitenstein, Head of Business unit Biometrics and eID of secunet, “In addition to enhanced privacy, this opens new possibilities for using biometrics in the private and public sector and effectively combat identity fraud.”

 “The combination of our private biometric solution BioHASH© and secunet’s biomiddle platform offers a reliable and proven solution for ePassports, identity documents and biometric payment deployments.” said Michiel van der Veen, CEO of priv-ID.