Thursday, October 19, 2006

Air Force, Army, Navy and Marines Deploying with BioCert® Technology.

From securing homeland bases with the BioCert® Guardian™ Fingerprint Door Locks to protecting Soldiers personal and sensitive data with portable BioCert® ClipBio™ Fingerprint Flash Drives, ASG’s BioCert® fingerprint biometric technology is taking an active role in protecting our troops, their families and improving homeland security.

Freeland, WA (PRWEB) September 23, 2006 — The United States Military Central Command is deploying soldiers to Iraq with the latest technology in biometric security to secure their personal and private information. Commanders at CENTCOM are distributing the BioCert® ClipBio™ Pro 1GB fingerprint flash drives to soldiers being deployed to Iraq.

US Air Force, Army, Navy, Marines and other coalition forces are using the ClipBio Pro (www.clipbio.com) to secure their personal communications with their families, personal files, create, store and email documents and to store confidential information all protected with their fingerprints. The BioCert ClipBio Pro is designed to secure up to 1Gigabyte of information with a simple swipe of your finger.

In addition to securing private data, the BioCert ClipBio Pro 1GB Portable Flash Disk can be used as a “complete PC on a stick” - without the additional weight of the PC. The ClipBio Pro comes standard with a suite of portable applications that make it possible for anyone to create, modify, convert to PDF, email and receive documents, pictures and even edit home movies, all with a swipe of their finger using any public PC. When the ClipBio is removed, no trace of the data is left on the host PC.

“Unlike previous generations, today’s soldiers have the ability to communicate from the field via the Internet with their families through the use of email, video email and other high tech methods on a regular basis. In years past, these messages from loved ones in the battlefield used to take months to get from a combat zone to the recipient. Now they take nano-seconds. Computers have changed the way we fight the battle, but also how we communcate with our loved ones at home. How can a soldier justify carrying a laptop with them into the field along with all of the other life-saving equipment they need to carry? Do they make a choice between life-saving devices such as flame retardant foundation garments to protect them from IED’s, breathable honeycomb “cooling vests” that are worn under their body armor to make the desert heat bearable, elbow and knee pads, gloves, a video camera, a notebook, - or - a 10 pound laptop? Now our brave men and women don’t have to make that choice. Todays soldier can carry everything they need to do everything they would normally do with a PC, all in under 2 ounces - in the palm of their hand for under a hundred dollars. Members of every branch of service are carrying their ClipBio Pro with them in the field.” claims James Childers - CEO of Artemis Solutions Group, (www.artemis-usa.com) makers of the BioCert ClipBio Pro Flash Drives.

Unit Commanders routinely authorize “open” computers for shared use by soldiers within their command. These computers are used on a rotating basis by soldiers not only to prepare, send and receive email with their loved ones, but also to conduct other personal business such as balancing the checkbook, budgeting, checking or repairing their credit report, online banking and all of the other activities that they would perform on their PC at home. The question has always been how do you keep your data safe from prying eyes? The answer is the $99 BioCert ClipBio Pro 1GB with Secure Biometric Encryption.

Just a few months ago news outlets reported that the US Military was paying Afghan shopkeepers thousands of dollars to recover unsecure flash drives that were stolen from Bagram Air Force Base and offered for sale in the local markets. These drives contained such sensitive information as “data that appeared to have come from inside the base, including a soldier's military discharge certificate, troop resumes and photographs of Air Force One during a visit to Afghanistan by President Bush”. According to news reports, some even included detailed diagrams of the base, duty rosters, and even names of Afghan spies working with the US against the Taliban.

Unfortunately this breach of security is not uncommon with insecure flash drives. So far this year, media reports have disclosed over 148 descrete events involving insecure portable data potentially exposing the private data over 33 million US Citizens (or over 11% of the US Population and EVERY single man and woman serving in our armed forces). “The Identity Theft Resource Center, a non-profit organization http://www.idtheftcenter.org keeps track of this wave of stupidity that is sweeping the country. With almost daily updates to the list they highlight the “reported” incidents and offer victims assistance through their many programs. Many incidents go sadly - unreported. Don’t be a victim. Take a pro-active stance to protect your data. A cheap insecure flash drive can cost you thousands of dollars worth of direct and consequential losses, not to mention a huge financial or criminal liability if you lose other individuals data.” continues Childers.

The ClipBio Pro solves this issue by protecting the private partition of the drive with AES Encrypted Security incorporating your fingerprint as the key.

Controlling access within a facility is another daunting task for government security professionals. ASG’s BioCert technology is leading the way with stand-alone fingerprint door locks to secure Information Technology assets within Naval and Air Force facilities. Securing an Server Room or Network Closet is as simple as replacing the existing lockset (with very minor modification to the door) with the BioCert® Guardian™ XL door lock (www.iqbio.com). The Guardian XL is a unique stand-alone security solution in that it requires no additional wiring, has built-in administrative management for 30 or 99 users and can be installed at any facility within a matter of minutes. Perfectly suited for “secondary echelon” security, the Guardian XL is designed to work inside the outer ring of high security facilities on doors that just need to authorize simple access. As a stand-alone solution, the Guardian XL Fingerprint Door Lock is easy to manage, simple to deploy and has both a PIN code and Secure Key overide.

ASG (www.artemis-usa.com) is a closely held, private security firm specializing in fingerprint biometric and smart card security solutions. With offices in the US, EU, and Canada, ASG sells directly and through its global network of resellers and system integrators best of breed biometric and smart card security systems to small & medium business and local government agencies throughout the world. ASG’s related company iQBio (www.iqbio.com) is tasked with design, supplier relations, manufacture and OEM manufacturing oversight and global sourcing, distribution and logistics of its solutions.