18 Jan Intersec: Q&A with IDEMIA
We’re continuing our series with industry leaders at Intersec 2022, as we catch up with Nicolas Garcia from IDEMIA.
IDEMIA are the global leader in augmented identity, and keeping transactions as secure as possible. It’s been two years since Intersec has been able to been to be held in person, and IDEMIA have been excited to return. Vice President of Sales Nicolas Garcia spoke with us to tell us what to expect from them this year…
“This is not the first time we are at Intersec and every year when we come, we’ve got new things to show,” said Garcia. “We’ve decided with the current situation to really push on the contactless solutions that we have to offer. We’ve been in the market of biometrics for over 40 years so therefore we’ve had the time to improve our technology and our algorithm and to work on.”
Security and the intelligent solutions have been constantly evolving, but whilst they do they have also been questioned and critiqued; particularly in relation to privacy.
Garcia explains: “When we speak about for instance facial recognition, there are always these questions of privacy and how do you make sure that somebody who’s not supposed to be identified is not identified. So what we’ve done is we created almost a zone of intent and basically somebody who’s coming close to the reader will not be identified unless the person really wants to go through a gate for instance.
“It’s very important because you also don’t want from a security point of view to be targeting the wrong person and for say, the person at the back to be identified, and then the gate to open, and somebody who was not authorised to be able to go through.”
Within the security industry, there has been discussion over facial recognition systems being prone to being ‘spoofed’ and more call for systems to be more sophisticated and overcome this. IDEMIA have seen much of this discussion and are often asked for their expertise in handling such an issue.
“That that’s been one of the many commands we received over the years and as, you know, at IDEMIA when we launched a new solution, we want to make sure that we don’t leave any stone unturned.” explains Garcia.
“What we’ve done is that we not only married performance but we made sure that we have the highest level of identifying capability. And the proof of that is that we’ve recently been awarded with higher level one and level two certification, which are basically covering everything from intrusion detection for cyber security.
“We are currently, the only one on the access control market and facial recognition market to offer a reader, which is certified not just for level one but level two as well. We are combining the best of all the technology we’ve got, we combine 3D technology with 2D technology and we make sure that when somebody is identified they are a real person and that it is the ones that needs to be identified at the right time at the right place.”
With Intersec resuming after a two year absence, how does it feel for IDEMIA to be back amongst others in the industry?
“I invite everybody to come and visit us,” explains Garcia. “This year we have some models to present including our contact fingerprint readers. We invite everybody to come and experience them – don’t take my word for it you will be amazed!”