News Briefs Jan 2015

Jan. 2, 2015

Secura Key Adds Lockdown, Door Status 

New  SK-NET™ Version 5.20 Access Control System Software from Secura Key includes two critically important features:  System Lockdown and Real-Time Door Status Reporting. Security officials at Schools, Courts, Government Offices and other facilities which may be targets of crime or terrorism need the ability to lock or disable groups of doors with a single command in order to react to internal or external threats, and they also need to know the real-time status of controlled doors in their facility. These features work with either the Secura Key SK-ACPE-LE or the NOVA.16 (SK-MRCP) access control panels and Smart Readers.

SK-NET™ provides three progressively more secure Lockdown levels:

Level 1 -Global Lock - cancels all Manual or Door Zone unlock commands.

Level 2 -Global Inactive for Lockdown Group – also places all doors in inactive mode.

Level 3 -Global Lockdown for Lockdown Group - also disables REX or ‘remote open’ inputs.

The Door Status icon color indicates off-normal Door Status conditions:

• No color indicates all doors are secure.

• Green indicates unlocked doors

• Yellow indicates doors held or propped open

• Red indicates doors forced open  

SK-NET™ allows the designation of Override Cards, which can be issued to Campus Police, or First Responders (Police, Fire or EMTs.) Override Cards allow access at any reader, whether inactive or locked, providing authorities with the access required to capture or neutralize an assailant.

A  new Secura Key White Paper, System Lockdown and Door Status Features,  explains how Lockdown can be implemented using an access control system, together with recommendations on securing the physical installation.  This White Paper is available on the Secura Key website, www.securakey.com

Kwikset Continues Kevo Enhancements

Kwikset continues to grow the Kevo™ platform within one year of the product’s introduction to market by improving user experience and expanding availability – making the industry’s first smart lock even smarter.  Kwikset introduces an improved user experience, private Android Beta program and international availability.

“Kwikset has experienced significant growth since Kevo’s release a year ago,” says Greg Williamson, chief marketing officer, Hardware and Home Improvement, Spectrum Brands. “Kwikset sets itself apart from the rest by constantly improving user experience and evaluating ways to expand reach.”

Customers asked for electronic (eKey) sharing following Kevo’s initial launch. In response, Kwikset released an app update that gives consumers the ability to program Scheduled eKeys, which operate with day and time constraints, and unlimited, free Guest eKeys, giving recipients unrestricted access to the home for a 24-hour period.

Kwikset released an app and lock firmware update to provide Auto-Calibration functionality using Kwikset’s patent-pending Inside / Outside positioning technology in October 2014. With Auto-Calibration, Kevo continuously learns where the user keeps their smart phone and automatically adjusts its activation range to the best and most secure setting. The positioning technology detects whether an authorized user is inside or outside of the home before granting access, to help prevent unauthorized entry. Auto-Calibration automatically enables the positioning technology to further simplify the user installation experience.

With the release of Android Lollipop (L), Kwikset, in partnership with UniKey, released an Invite Only Beta Program for users with compatible Android L software on supported devices to test the Kevo app. Beta users will provide feedback and data that will help Kwikset and UniKey develop a Kevo for Android app with more features and functionality. For more information about the Beta program, please visithttps://mykevo.com/beta/android.

Previously only available to consumers in the United States and Canada, Kwikset is proud to announce Kevo is now rolling out international purchase availability. Kwikset launched Kevo to the Australian market in November. The roll out will continue with the launch of product for purchase in Southeast Asia and New Zealand in 2015.

MorphoTrak Marks 40 Years 

MorphoTrak, aMorpho(Safran) company based in the U.S., markedits 40th anniversary as apioneer developer of Automated Fingerprint Identification Systems (AFIS).

MorphoTrak traces its history in fingerprint matching to Rockwell Autonetics, which in 1974 built the first-ever Automated Fingerprint components for the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). Rockwell spun off its fingerprint unit as Rockwell Printrak in the 1980s. Printrak was acquired by Motorola in the year 2000, and then by the leading fingerprint system vendor, Sagem Morpho (part of Safran), to become MorphoTrak in 2009.

“MorphoTrak has been at the forefront of fingerprint matching research and development since our roots in 1974,” stated Celeste Thomasson, President and CEO of MorphoTrak. “We are proud to be part of a technology legacy that is such an integral part of law enforcement and public safety in the U.S. and around the world.”

The FBI has been the central national repository for fingerprints in the US since 1924. By the 1960s, the fingerprint card collection had grown to comprise millions of cards. Searching this collection was a manual process that quickly became unmanageable. It could take several days to compare a print against a thousand possible matches.

To overcome this problem, the FBI sought to automate the fingerprint matching process. In 1969 the Bureau sponsored a feasibility study and eventually awarded a contract to Rockwell Autonetics in 1974 to build five high-speed card reading systems to automate fingerprint matching.

The first AFIS system required an entire room. The system stored only the minutiae (points of comparison on a fingerprint); disk technology was too expensive to save the images. Yet even with this limitation, this first AFIS helped the FBI solve more crimes far more quickly than previously possible.

Over the past 40 years, AFIS technology has progressed significantly. Today, thanks to improvements in both matching algorithms and system architecture, AFIS systems are faster and more accurate, searching more data than ever before. The 1990s brought “composite” systems that were able to select the best prints available from multiple arrests of a single individual. In the early 2000s, “multi-incident” systems added the ability to also perform searches against each individual arrest record, and also against the flat impressions on a fingerprint card.

The latest evolution in AFIS is the ability to search all areas of the hand known as “Major Case Prints”. The FBI’s NGI (Next Generation Identification) program has this new capability. This technology was provided by MorphoTrak and is also now available on MorphoBIS which is widely used by law enforcement across the U.S.

Law enforcement agencies submitting prints to NGI now have an expanded searchable area of the hand well beyond the area covered in a standard tenprint records. The majority of prints left at crime scenes are comprised of prints not covered by the standard tenprint record. This leads to more crimes solved and safer communities, particularly with the new NGI system currently housing 120 million print records and performing over 10,000 latent searches per month.