There has been a dramatic increase in the use of biometric technology - especially customised solutions - by organisations in SA and the rest of the continent, says Limtech Biometric Solutions, a local manufacturer of biometric hardware and software products.
"The South African market has been exposed to biometric solutions for many years, but has entered a rapid growth phase only recently as awareness, acceptance and effectiveness of the technology has increased," says Chris Snell, Limtech director.
"There has been a significant increase in the demand for customised biometric applications recently, especially in the past 18 months," he says.
Biometric solutions use various physical characteristics of users such as hand geometry, voice patterns, facial recognition and fingerprints for positive identification.
"Although biometric solutions may be more expensive than your average card or tag system, the value-add lies in the accuracy of the log records, which cannot be guaranteed by systems using tokens that can be shared."
Snell says Limtech`s current focus is on access control and time and attendance solutions for small and large enterprises using fingerprint readers.
"While fingerprint reading is the biometric technology dominating the local access control market, there are definitely niche opportunities for other biometric technologies, providing the challenges of market awareness, training and product support can be overcome."
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