IN THE BOARDROOM™ with...

Mr. Bill Bartlett
NEC
www.necam.com
Nasdaq:NIPNY

SecuritySolutionsWatch.com: Thank you for joining us today, Bill. Please give us an overview of your background and your role at NEC.

Bill Bartlett: My role at NEC has been product manager for the past 2 ½ years. I work with our development, sales and marketing teams to align and define our strategy for developing and marketing our PID (Positive ID) product line. Our efforts to refine and update these products have lead to the development of our PIDplus line of products.

SecuritySolutionsWatch.com: Perhaps we can start with NEC’s debut of PIDplus identification technology to the civil and commercial markets. Please give us an overview of PIDplus and NEC’s IT and identity management solutions.

Bill Bartlett: NEC Corporation of America is a premier provider of IT, network and identity management solutions. PIDplus is our newest product offering in the area of identity management. Based on commercial-off-the-shelf (COTS) hardware and software, PIDplus is a software-based multi-modal biometric matching architecture for the creation of both fingerprint and facial matching applications. The PIDplus development platform provides an easy-to-integrate environment for system integrators, applications providers and device manufacturers. PIDplus provides the capability to develop applications that include both verification and identification features. It also enables applications to scale to meet the demands of projects of all sizes; from small verification to very-large scale identification. The ease with which PIDplus supports full integration allows customers to bio-enable their applications with little or no biometric expertise.

PIDplus offers a multi-tier architecture that makes expansion simple, allowing systems to grow seamlessly using only COTS hardware and software. The advanced PIDplus architecture provides continuous operation through redundant control, database and match elements. PIDplus is designed with sophisticated built-in failover capabilities to ensure that no fault within any component can bring the system down.

Finally, this exceptional system design is backed by NEC’s best-in-class matching accuracy, which has been validated time and again through not only the high performance of our many law enforcement systems but also through third-party accuracy tests, such as those conducted by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST). These tests prove conclusively that NEC is unrivaled in its ability to accurately match biometric data. The same matching algorithm that was examined in these tests is used as the base for PIDplus biometric matching.

SecuritySolutionsWatch.com: What is your perspective on the market drivers for NEC ID solutions at this time?

Bill Bartlett: NEC has dominated the AFIS market for the law enforcement industry for decades now. In order to replicate this tremendous success in new markets, PIDplus was developed to expand NEC’s reach into the growing demand for high quality civil and commercial AFIS. PIDplus leverages NEC’s best-in-class AFIS matching accuracy and extensive experience in designing and building AFIS to support NEC’s entrance into this growing market segment.

We see PIDplus as a driving force enabling NEC to reach our future growth targets and to support our entrance into new markets.

Below are some of the benefits PIDplus provides to meet the industry’s challenges:

High-performance identification system with speed & accuracy
PIDplus incorporates NEC’s best and latest fingerprint matching technology that provides maximum matching accuracy and speed, which has been validated by NIST (National Institute of Standards and Technology).

Effortless integration into existing platforms and solutions
PIDplus is based on an open service-oriented architecture and can be integrated via a standard Web-based interface using XML.

Hardware agnostic architecture
PIDplus is hardware and platform agnostic so it can be easily integrated into any verification and identification applications or devices running on different operating systems, and supports a wide variety of fingerprint scanners or sensors.

Multi-modal biometrics in a single, integrated platform
PIDplus supports both fingerprint and facial matching and will support other modes in the future.

Scalable systems that maintain high accuracy as they grow
With its multi-tiered software-based architecture, PIDplus can easily scale up without sacrificing matching speed and accuracy. Customers do not need to replace the entire algorithm and reinvest in new systems as business expands.

SecuritySolutionsWatch.com: Can you please tell us about the California Automated Palm Print System (CAPPS) solution NEC provided here?

Bill Bartlett: NEC integrated the California Automated Palm Print Identification System (CAPPS) with the existing California Department of Justice (DOJ) AFIS in September 2003. The original CAPPS database size was 200,000 records. In 2006, the California DOJ expanded their CAPPS database to accommodate the increased palm processing workload. The DOJ database contains approximately 1,114,686 records, which is the largest finger and palm print database of any U.S. state.

The California DOJ AFIS is utilized by as many as 74 municipal and regional law enforcement entities. Eight agencies have been designated Full Use Access Agencies (FUAA) since the network became operational in 1985. The other law enforcement entities utilize Local Input Terminals (LIT) - smaller more cost-effective systems serving smaller cities and regions, and effectively serving as "spokes" that extend the database's power to more remote areas. The number of LIT users has grown from just 14 in 1985 to 60 today.

Over 77 percent of all transmitted criminal live scans processed are palm prints transactions. Prior to NEC providing this capability, palm print matching was a difficult and time consuming process. Latent Examiners had to pull prints from files and perform a manual latent comparison.

Today, the system features remote and extremely fast search capabilities. Any NEC FUAA or LIT remote workstation can launch a search and expect an approximate response time of less than 10 minutes.

SecuritySolutionsWatch.com: We also noticed your recent announcement regarding the Alabama Police Department which selected NEC’s Automated Fingerprint Identification System (AFIS). Can you tell our audience more about this project?

Bill Bartlett: The City of Huntsville, Alabama Police Department selected NEC’s AFIS with palm print matching through a formal RFP process. The City selected NEC’s AFIS to dramatically enhance its ability to quickly and reliably identify crime-scene prints and match them to city and state databases.

The Huntsville Police Department joined the Mobile (AL) Police Department to become the second Full Use Access Agencies (FUAA) AFIS in the State of Alabama with automated connectivity to the NEC AFIS located at the Alabama Bureau of Investigation (ABI) in Montgomery. The NEC AFIS installed at Huntsville Police Department is capable of automated input and search/match functions for both fingerprints and palm prints.

The City of Huntsville Police Department NEC AFIS is pre-loaded with electronically-converted fingerprint images from the Alabama Bureau of Investigation (ABI) system, allowing the police department to immediately search known Huntsville records, and expand the search to the statewide database in the absence of matches at a local level. The system at ABI then automatically forwards Huntsville Police Department searches to the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). ABI and the FBI then both send notification back to the Huntsville Police Department with an identification or non-identification response. This "quick start" functionality offered by the pre-loaded fingerprint images is enhanced by the system's ease of use, accuracy, and straightforward entry process. Additional functionality includes LiveScan, Latent Print Enhancement sub-system, and an interface to Criminal History System.

SecuritySolutionsWatch.com: Are there one or two projects in the U.S. Government space you care to mention?

Bill Bartlett: At this time we are working on a number of projects, but none we can openly announce at this time. PIDplus debuted in March of this year. You can expect to hear a great deal about this exciting product over the coming months.

SecuritySolutionsWatch.com: Any other projects you’d like to talk about?

Bill Bartlett: Again, we are working on a range of projects but due to the nature of PIDplus being a development platform for third-parties to use for the purpose of bio-enabling their own products, it will be a while before we can announce these publicly.

SecuritySolutionsWatch.com: Please tell about NEC's ChildID™ solution.

Bill Bartlett: NEC’s ChildID system collects up-to-date identification information that includes photographs, digital fingerprint images, and pertinent demographic information.
The ChildID solution provides valuable resources that help law enforcement agencies solve missing children cases all over the country. Our solution helps communities protect children, increase public safety and promote families' peace of mind.

All it takes is a simple process of scanning a child’s fingers on a capture device, taking of the child’s picture with a digital camera, entering demographic information provided by a parent (optional) and finally, printing of the ChildID sheet which is given to parents to retain in a safe place. For privacy reasons, no information is ever electronically stored on the computer.

The system configuration is simple and includes: NEC’s ChildID software, a laptop computer, fingerprint image scanner, digital camera, color printer and one all-in-one travel case.

ChildID offers a quick, clean and safe way to provide parents with a reliable form of child identification.

SecuritySolutionsWatch.com: Are there any particular NEC strategic relationships you would like to mention?

Bill Bartlett: NEC is working to establish relationships with a large number of integrators specifically for PIDplus; some are in the works now and will be made public in the near future.

However, for our law enforcement market, NEC together with Biometrics4ALL, a leading multi-biometrics technology company, recently announced the introduction of the LiveScan product family, a state-of-the-art technology to meet civil and law enforcement identification demands. The collaboration with Biometrics4ALL enables NEC to offer a complete capture-to-booking system with speed and accuracy.

The LiveScan products offer the latest in biometrics technology, providing the ability to dynamically set data interchanges and business rules, quickly attain FBI certifications, and adapt to new scanner hardware. In addition, the products provide immediate NFIQ (National Institute of Standards and Technology Fingerprint Image Quality) rating feedback with Rescan Management™, and switch seamlessly into multiple languages. The LiveScan products allow for quick adaptation to legislation changes and law enforcement needs, and reduced redundant data entry through a full, two-way XML data interchange. The LiveScan software is easily supportable with single-click automatic upgrades and centralized software monitoring capabilities.

Because of the LiveScan system’s software architecture, deployment is much faster than most other products on the market, and software modifications can be made far more easily, limiting downtime and improving product quality. The complete family of LiveScan technology – the LS 200 for applicant processing, the LS 300 for criminal processing and the LS 400 kiosk solution – can be seamlessly integrated into NEC’s identification solutions offerings, providing a one-stop shop for all identification and processing needs.

SecuritySolutionsWatch.com: What resources such as streaming video, webcasts, podcasts, “white papers” and “case studies” are available for end-users on www.necam.com?

Bill Bartlett: These are in production and will be available in the near future.

SecuritySolutionsWatch.com: Thanks again for joining us today, Bill. Are there any other subjects you’d like to discuss?

Bill Bartlett: On behalf of NEC, I’d like to thank you for the opportunity to discuss PIDplus with you and to get the chance to illustrate its unique features.

As the Civil Commercial AFIS market expands, there is a growing need for a single platform that can deliver both reliable identification matching and reliable verification matching. PIDplus delivers both.

PIDplus offers the ability to cover both ends of this matching spectrum with the highest level of accuracy available in a package that is easy to integrate, provides exceptional scalability, supports exceptional performance and delivers full fail-over capabilities.

Watch for big things from the product in the coming months and years.