uced quality improvements and price reductions. A stand-alone fingerprint reader might have cost anywhere from $2,000 to $3,000 two years ago, but now it can sell for less than $100. Analysts say fingerprint scanning is the top biometric in terms of mind and market share, with hand geometry coming in second, followed by face and iris scanning. There's a growing crop of biometrics vendors expanding the market and pushing what was once technology solely aimed at forensics and government security into the enterprise market. Companies such as Identix of Sunnyvale, Calif., Veridicom of Santa Clara and Key Tronic in Spokane, Wash., are taking biometrics corporate. And they're catching the eye of industry giants like Compaq, which is embedding fingerprint scanners into keyboards and laptops. "When we first started working with Identix, going back about six years, it cost several thousand dollars for a fingerprint reader the size of a small telephone," says Joel Lisker, senior vice president of security and risk management at MasterCard International in Purchase, N.Y. "The current model is embedded in the keyboard, and it's in the $5 to $10 range." MasterCard, which issues employee identification cards with smart chips embedded in them, is testing different biometric methods for everything from building access to network access. Lisker says repeat visitors to the company's headquarters were the first guinea pigs, having their images and fingerprints stored electronically for a digital match every time they returned. The credit card company also is looking into voice recognition, and earlier this year began a pilot project using fingerprints to authenticate users for network access. Lisker says the trial, involving five or six employees, is going well, and he expects to broaden it to 100 users by year-end. "Eventually, I expect their employee cards will gain them access to the building, the network, specified applications, and will even be used ...
