OREANDA-NEWS. May 2, 2012.  Fujitsu Laboratories Limited today announced development of the world's smallest and slimmest palm vein authentication sensor that is capable of being employed in tablet devices. By upgrading the technology's design with new image sensors and other optical components, Fujitsu Laboratories has successfully slimmed down the new sensor to a thickness of 5 mm.

The new sensor preserves the same authentication performance as existing technology while halving thickness of current models. This also enables easy deployment to mobile devices, such as tablets and slate PCs, which are becoming increasingly slimmer, and helps to expand the range of applications for palm vein authentication. More customers will now be able to perform secure authentication using simple operations.
Background

In recent years, to prevent damage caused by information leaks and identity fraud at companies and financial institutions, biometric authentication technologies, which leverage a user's biological information, have become prevalent as a means to verify an individual's identity.

Fujitsu Laboratories has developed a biometric authentication technology based on the vein patterns in a user's palm. This approach has a number of advantages that are unique even among biometric authentication technologies, including high authentication accuracy and the measurement of data from inside of the body, which makes it difficult to falsify.

The technology has been commercialized by Fujitsu as a non-contact palm vein authentication system called PalmSecure, which is used, for instance, by banks to authenticate customers, for computer log-in, and in room-entry/exit management systems. Last year, Fujitsu successfully developed and commercialized a sensor that features a smaller and thinner footprint, as well as a simpler authentication process (Figure 1). This is useful in the business world which in recent years has seen the explosive growth of slate PCs and tablet devices, and the subsequent need for improved security in compact devices which has grown to an unprecedented level.