Fujitsu rolls out biometric palm vein authentication in Japan offices

Fujitsu is rolling out its biometric palm vein authentication solutions within its own company to replace passwords used by around 80,000 employees in Japan.

The employees use passwords to access their virtual desktops but as part of Fujitsu's workstyle transformation efforts, they will begin to use palm authentication technology.

Employees will be able to wave their palms over Fujitsu's PalmSecure biometric authorization sensors, which are either built into company PCs or remain as standalone PalmSecure peripherals.

"By making use of difficult-to-duplicate palm vein recognition, Fujitsu can work toward the increased security and convenience necessary for the modern work styles that it promotes, such as teleworking," the company says in a statement.

"Deploying palm vein authentication, not just for logins to the virtual desktop, but in a wide variety of forthcoming business applications will further improve operating efficiency.

The company's Tokai Branch Office and Fujitsu Solution Square will also remove smartcard-based authentication and replace it with palm-vein authentication, as part of a year-long field trial covering approximately 5200 employees.

Employees will wave their palms for authentication. Fujitsu says the process is both more secure and more convenient than conventional methods such as waving an employee badge.

Based on the results of the trial, Fujitsu will consider extending use to other gates and doorways in other company offices.

Both palm vein authentication rollouts will be supported by a cloud-based platform in order to drive enhanced security and streamlined operations throughout the company.

The company's Security Solution Personal Authentication Platform AuthConductor Server will provide the underlying platform for both the palm vein authentication and management.

It will also compare captured data to previous palm vein data via a large database of palm vein data for fast and accurate authentication.

"In markets outside of Japan, the flexibility of Fujitsu's palm vein authentication technology makes various implementations possible for the management of biometric information that adhere to the rules and regulations regarding data privacy of the countries in which the solution is deployed," the company adds.

"Both deployments of palm vein authentication, including the login to virtual desktops and worksite entry authentication, will use PalmSecure as authentication devices, creating a system on the company's Fujitsu Cloud Service K5," the company explains.

The company says it looks forward to the internal deployment and it intends to expand its range of palm vein authentication for customers.