How do business organizations benefit from system integration?

Bottom-line thinking ensures your future. Look at any successful, lasting company, and you'll find leaders who know their bottom line. They make their decisions, allocate their resources, hire their people, and structure their organization to achieve that bottom line.

Integrated systems are being designed for bigger and better purposes, and their limitations are being reduced. When system integration is successfully implemented, a business will be able to respond to market changes quickly and the system architecture will support these adaptations. Eventually, businesses will start to experience that the reporting, management and performance improvement is made easier and it can focus on targets without the constraint of outdated technology systems hindering the way of efficiency. Once a company can cut out the inefficiency of incompatible systems and focus exclusively on its goals, it can develop strategies to increase profits by analyzing data and weigh up the competition. Segregated systems are a roadblock that can devastate and derail even the most otherwise advanced business. It is just not possible to get the most out of your efforts when your energy is being consumed to put out the fires caused by programs that won’t work together to achieve a common goal.
System integration allows the user to operate from a single system. Changes can be incorporated from a single screen, instead of having multiple computers and processes running simultaneously. This approach reduces the time spent on training administrators on how to use multiple tools, and ensure they have a thorough knowledge of the integrated system. As there is no need for data to be exported, imported or replicated, there is lesser chance for human error. This will provide managers with more accurate data. Organizations deal with sensitive information that needs to be protected. By using one system, one can easily build in the security tools necessary to prevent access by unauthorized users both in hardware devices and software. Achieving this is far more difficult when you have got several disparate tools and systems in use. Ultimately your business premises will be safer and your systems more secure; leading to happier and more loyal customers.

eSSL is an Indian provider of cloud, mobile, desktop, and web-based property management software. In addition to attendance management solutions, we have renowned technologies that can integrate biometrics with entrance control, door locks, parking barriers, metal detectors, baggage scanners and more. We also help businesses with anti-theft and top-notch inspection systems. From boom barriers and bollards at parking areas to turnstiles/flap barriers and inspection systems (metal detectors, baggage scanners, hand-held metal detector) at the building entrance, we have everything covered. Knowing that efficiency is the biggest asset of any organization, we provide the best-in-class software solutions for security and seamless experience that can reflect in overall efficiency. 

Read More

Smart Ways to Carry Out Theme Park Visitor Management

The ticket issuing window at a theme park is a busy place. Managing high volumes of customers with traditional visitor management methods can be a hectic task in such places. Biometrics offers a viable solution for a theme park visitor management system. Visitor management systems with fingerprint recognition can overcome these challenges and enable a large number of visitors in amusement parks. After a one time enrolment, visitors can just present their biometrics to the scanner during their subsequent visits, thereby letting them skip long queues. Theme parks in India are proposing to upgrade their visitor management system with biometrics like a fingerprint. Theme parks like Disneyland in Florida have already implemented fingerprint-based visitor management systems.

Providing requisite security along with risk analysis and capacity planning in these crowded spaces is highly important. Today’s security systems must anticipate future problems because once installed, there won’t be any time left to upgrade it on the field. Therefore, the usage of crowd management technology like smart turnstiles and barriers is advised. It can support administrators in collecting information about the crowd for better future planning since turnstiles can count the number of people who enter and exit the park. This information about the speed of flow helps control people's traffic and assists marketers with providing seasonal discounts and offers. Turnstiles can also be a part of fare collection solutions, check for the validity of tickets, prevent tailgating and avoid unauthorized access, thereby ensure scalable revenue for the theme park. eSSL houses a variety of turnstiles that can be integrated to perform face and fingerprint recognition, QR/Barcode scanning, RFID reader and card/coin collector.     

In the case of theme park visitor management, visitors’ fingerprints can be recorded, encrypted to a unique long integer and stored in a database. The fingerprint data can then discarded from the database within the next 30 days for privacy-related concerns. Currently, Barcode and RFID technology are available for visitors to scan tickets and gain entry to the theme park. If biometrics is introduced, it will curb the issue of sharing or transferability of passes among individuals apart from the person who made the actual purchase.

Along with ease and security, there are a lot of reasons to authenticate payments using biometric methods. Ease of use, speed, mobility, and future-proofing are some of them. Biometrics is a unique and personal way of identifying individuals. With this approach, there is no need to remember multiple PINs and passwords. While it may be fairly undetectable, authenticating using a biometric feature is faster and easier than entering a password or pin. This is beneficial for both the consumer as well as businesses, with the transaction made much more straightforward by the adoption of biometric authentication for payments. As business outlets move to a contactless payment model, the acceptance of consumers choosing to pay using Apple or Google Pay on their mobile devices and authorizing with biometrics means that you can make a payment anywhere, anytime.

Running a company that is 100% efficient is still a dream. But having a good technology set up will result in some good business. 

Read More

Benefits of automating healthcare services

Automation in every aspect of the healthcare provider’s value chain can revolutionize the service into world-class quality. Highly developed countries have a centralized database of patient records through which doctors can cautiously treat patients by knowing his/her medical history along with their insurance details. This system comes handy especially in cases of emergency. It also makes consequent visits seamless and efficient.

Along with visitor management, data breach has also become a daunting issue for hospitals. Healthcare institutions are striving hard to overcome this vulnerability. This has led to the need for a balance between patient data security and productivity. Studies have proven that automation in the field of healthcare services like RPA (Robotic Process Automation) can increase referral rate, decrease acquisition cost and also increase revenue. 

Over the years, developments in operational efficiency and patient care standards have enormously transformed how healthcare institutions function. This is true in the case of both patients and medical professionals. Integrated security management systems can help hospital administrators to manage operations at multiple sites on a single dashboard as part of security management software. Let's consider a hospital, where a lot of resources are required to monitor all patients in wards in a one to one manner. Palmetto Hospital in Columbia has introduced the Telesitter program, where a one on one patient sitter is replaced by a device. This is a Wi-Fi enabled device equipped with a microphone, camera and speakers. The footages are accessible from the monitor room, from where the observers can alert the nurses in case of any necessity. Few hospitals also have infant protection systems in place where the mother and infant are connected using RFID tags. This helps avoid errors like accidental switching and abduction of newborn babies caused due to manual methods.

Read More

The Need and Benefits of Visitor Management Software

Many businesses still use paper-based, manual visitor management systems, such as guest books or name tags. However, there are issues associated with using such outdated systems. They are not infallible, and they are difficult and time-consuming to manage and document. But mainly, they don’t provide the type of security your organization needs when it comes to unwanted visitors. Here is a list of benefits Visitor Management Systems can offer to your employees and organization:- 

• Visitor management software will quickly improve building security and employee safety
• A good system will save you money. 
• Visitor management software increases efficiency.
• Visibility and accountability - Modern visitor management software allows you to identify anyone who is in your building at any given time. Moreover, these systems will give you the ability to detail and study a variety of visitor movement patterns. 
• It will improve customer satisfaction, professionalism, and staff morale - If the staff at the reception welcomes visitors warmly, quickly, and efficiently, it raises the professional environment of the organization, all while keeping your staff and facilities secure.
• Visitors can be pre-registered - If you know a visitor is scheduled for a meeting, all the relevant details can be added ahead of time. Confirming emails with map location, safety instructions, and other meeting details can be automatically sent to any visitors. All of this will dramatically speed up a visitor’s sign-in process, which is good for everyone involved. 

• Flexibility and the ability to grow with your business.
• Professional First Impressions 
• Reinforced Branding
• Modernized Reception
• Embracing Paperless 
• Reduced Waiting Times
• On-Site Transparency
• Threat Mitigation  
• Global Scalability
• Legal and GDPR Compliance

Integrated security management and visitor management systems can even help hospital administrators to manage operations at multiple sites on a single dashboard. The proper visitor management system will help the administration to track movements of permanent residents along with that of guests and delivery executives. Maintaining visitors' log on pen and paper is prone to multiple fake entries. Ensuring proper perimeter surveillance solves most of the security-related problems that real estate managers face. This not only reduces unwanted intrusions but also gives sufficient information regarding in and out activities of visitors. Today’s security systems must anticipate future problems because once installed, there won’t be any time left to upgrade it on the field. 

Visit www.esslsecurity.com/contactus for more information.

Read More

Biometric Trends: What can we expect in the future?

The global biometric market is expected to double itself in value by the year 2025 according to recent forecast and analysis reports. Major reasons that lead to this expected growth are the increased usage of biometric technologies as part of various government initiatives, escalating need for security and surveillance due to terrorist attacks, consumer electronics, and booming of biometrics in the automobile and enterprise space. Biometrics has already proven to be a revolution in mobile technology. PINs and passwords are easily forgotten, lost, stolen and even hacked. Biometrics adds a layer of security where a person’s unique identity becomes their password, which makes devices, apps, and transactions more secure. 

With the surging demand for digital services such as mobile wallets, mobile banking, and other digital payments, the demand for cutting-edge user authentication is growing at a fast pace to ensure the security and convenience of customers. Based on the type of technology used, the biometrics technology market can be segmented into fingerprint recognition, palm recognition, face recognition, iris recognition, voice recognition, and others. 

Current trends in cutting-edge biometrics play a very important role in today’s online banking and e-government processes. Traditional methods of authentication like PINs and passwords are only based on what a person can memorize. Biometric traits are unique and personal, and cannot be easily lost or forgotten making it the most accurate way of identifying an individual. Fingerprint scanning is the most common technology used for biometric identification, with face and iris recognition not far behind. Though a majority of uses of biometric authentication are performed on-site, mobile device usage is growing rapidly. 

Voice printing is one such technology that is gaining popularity in recent times. A database of every citizen’s voiceprint is created. Frequency estimation, pattern matching algorithms, hidden Markov models, Gaussian mixture models, and neural networks are some of the techniques used to process and store voiceprints in this database. These voiceprints are then used as evidence when required during cases of kidnapping and other criminal activities. For example, when a kidnapper places a phone call demanding ransom, their voice can be matched and identified using this voiceprint database. Organized crime now focuses on data theft which puts our credit card details at risk of being compromised. Biometric authentication eliminates the risk brought about by hacking. 

When we use face recognition as an authentication method, we must admit to a fact that face duplication may occur in the case of twins, but their fingerprints will alw
ays be unique. The magnitude of instances where this can happen is meager at workplaces though. There can also be a few instances where the fingerprints of an individual are not available due to accidents or dirt. Face recognition then becomes a reliable option since facial features are always available in every individual. To get a face scanned, the person need not come in contact with any device or parts of it. This makes face recognition non-intrusive, unlike fingerprint scanning. Remote verification is one of the advantages of using a face recognition system. 

Face recognition systems can be made to work using just software but fingerprint enabled systems do require a combination of both hardware and software. This will further increase the cost of implementation. So, to implement facial recognition in a smartphone, all the manufacturer has to do is invest in good face recognition software. 

A possibility for spoofing a facial recognition system arises when the implementations are not capable of mapping the face in a 3-D configuration. In such cases, anybody can spoof the system by using another person’s photograph. Hence it is highly crucial to have updated versions of these devices to minimize false acceptance rates.

Read More

What is Signature Recognition?

The objective of signature recognition is to identify the person to whom the signature belongs. Signatures are heavily relied upon by banks, businesses and governments to both authorize documents and transactions. Therefore the ability to accurately verify a signature is critical. As things like forgery and fraud can cost organizations their money, time and reputation. As a result, these organizations have relied upon the human eye. Years of experience and forensic training to make decisions regarding signature authenticity that means decisions on accuracy are also hindered by human impacts such as the level of expertise, fatigue, mood and working conditions. For example, a signature verification operator who is required to review 200 to 300 signatures an hour will have diminished accuracy over time, making more mistakes by the end of the day than the beginning. 

Now there are automated signature verification software. Organizations utilizing this software can evaluate most, if not all, signatures more reliably and at a much lower cost than they spent previously. Now there are more ways to capture signatures and the increase in electronic transactions, the need today is greater than ever. Here is how automated signature verification works- 

Automated signature verification gives you the power of software algorithms. These algorithms can analyze dozens of features of a signature and to discern characteristics of a signature that are indistinguishable to the human eye. Designed specifically to analyze a range of informative signature features, you get competing horsepower dedicated to the presence of typical elements, comparison of geometric shapes, fragments, trajectories and when used online, analysis of pressure, speed and tension. Multiple software engines work together to produce a combined output that you can rely on. This will enable officials to cope with random forgeries. Forgeries where the signature does not match the name of the authorized signee and blind forgeries, forgeries using the correct name but incorrect style are quickly identified and flagged for human review. 

Even when it comes to highly skilled forgeries, signature verification software can provide outstanding recognition capability. You can use automated signature verification for either an online or offline solution. Whether you collect and verify signatures online through signature pads, tablets, and smartphones, or you collect and verify signatures offline on paper or scanned documents. As mobile and distributed capture technologies continue to grow in adoption, signature verification is expected to grow as a reliable, readily available and accurate biometric verification measure. So, whether you are depositing cheques, opening accounts, processing insurance claims, counting ballots or enabling transactions from a point of sale or mobile device, automatic signature verification can help you identify and reduce fraud early and efficiently.

Read More

Entering new heights of security with Full-Height Turnstiles by eSSL

The barriers of Full Height Turnstiles extend from the floor level to being up to 7 feet tall and can thus enhance the physical security of building premises. By allowing passage to only authorized persons and reducing the risk of trespassing, they set smart boundaries and keep access secure. Waist-high turnstiles are generally used in public areas, such as theme parks and stadiums, to manage large crowds entering the facility. They are also frequently used in lobby areas, warehouses, cafeterias, and manufacturing facilities. However, waist-height turnstiles can allow for the possibility of unauthorized users climbing over or under the barrier arm. Full height turnstiles can put an end to such unsought possibilities.

The following are some of the undeniable benefits that full height turnstiles by eSSL have to offer-

1. High level of security - Manually operated entrances and exits cannot offer the level of security that full height turnstiles provide. With appropriate secure gating systems, you can also track the activity of every individual entering and exiting your facility. 
2. Reduced Cost - Even though their installation can cost you a little on the higher side, a full-height turnstile will save you a considerable amount in the long-run by reducing labor costs and losses from unauthorized entry. 
3. Attendance Management - The functions provided by full height turnstile gates offer accurate attendance tracking of your employees or authorized personnel on the building or premises. These gates can verify credentials including biometrics and RFID so that you don’t have to rely on manual methods, which not only consume time but also are prone to errors.
4. Efficient Access Control - Full height turnstiles allow administrators to integrate access control with biometrics, proximity cards, etc to ensure no unauthorized trespassing can be carried out. Such integrated barriers or gates offer superior access control as compared to hired security staff.
5. Throughput Rate - Without turnstiles, entrants must be manually checked for authentication by an attendant, which takes a longer time than using turnstiles. This efficient throughput gained by using a turnstile access control system also ensures that there is no stagnant traffic at access points. eSSL’s Full Height Turnstiles enable a throughput rate of up to 35 persons per minute.
6. Flexibility - Depending on the application, a single or bi-directional turnstile gate can be used. While a unidirectional gate will allow authorized personnel to either enter or exit a facility, a bi-directional gate will do both. Also, one can control the operations with a remote. You can change the settings according to the situation. For example, when your facility is shut down, the turnstile can be locked and when you don’t need to restrict access, you can set it in a free pass mode. 

Turnstiles enhance security and integrate easily with other access control and visitor management systems. With multiple options for features and types, turnstiles conveniently meet the requirements and improve the security of today’s business facilities. To make the operations of crowded events and mass transit more feasible, turnstiles can also be part of fare collection solutions, check for the validity of tickets, prevent tailgating and avoid unauthorized access, thereby ensure scalable revenue for the event management and public transport departments. eSSL houses a variety of turnstiles that can be integrated to perform face and fingerprint recognition, QR/Barcode scanning, RFID reader and card/coin collector. Full height turnstiles provide an automated way of checking passengers’ tickets and disallow unauthorized persons at the same time. This eliminates the need for extra workers to check each ticket at various access points of a subway station, music events, sports match, etc. 

Read More

Go Paperless at your office to overcome security challenges!

The digital universe can seem like a frightening place. News about data breaches, information sprawl, and lost records add to the fear. Trusted document management solutions offer options to fight this challenge through strategic authorization functions, the ability to construct regulatory compliance into data management processes and other similar functions in an organization. A few data breach reports may arise as companies go digital, but consider the security challenges that come with paper records. You will find out that going paperless may not seem so scary. 

Going digital can readily simplify most document security processes. User authentication is a real challenge for digital systems, but emerging technologies simplify and resolve those issues. Managing access control to physical paper records will require specialized security knowledge. A physical access control system may require such tools as smart locks that control who can access different rooms at different times and/or security workforce to monitor access points. 

When organizations depend on paper, they need to establish strict access control measures. Similar user authentication methods are necessary when companies go paperless, but the capability is pre-built into a
software to keep the procedure simple. Guarding documents isn't just about avoiding theft. Avoiding loss of data is just as important. Paper presents a major problem here. Acidic materials within paper cause it to break down easily over time, particularly when exposed to any sort of temperature or environmental extremes. If a cabinet shelf gets lots of direct sunlight in the summer, ink on paper can fade over time, for example. 

Going digital with time attendance access control software like eTimeTracklite eliminates the roadblocks that you have to worry about. Documents and other data are hosted in the cloud, where we manage infrastructure environments and handle data flexibly for you. 

Security is one primary example of how going digital can be simpler for doing business. Organizations can incorporate internal and external rules for how users access data within a platform. This can include creating access regulations, user activity tracking and similar functions that give businesses a greater level of control over their attendance data environments while also keeping the employee experience as simple as possible. 

Paper may be familiar for many businesses, but that doesn't make it easy. Digital attendance management, on the other hand, creates opportunities to reduce complexity within data security and help businesses keep information safe.

Read More

India inclined towards biometric authentication over passwords: Survey

The popularity of biometric authentication is increasing rapidly in every part of the world. Biometric information means photograph, fingerprint, iris scan, or other biological characteristics of an individual. Visa has researched biometric usage throughout the world and one of the studies was conducted in India. The survey resulted in some valuable and important insights. Indian consumers find the use of biometrics for processing payments and unlocking accounts much easier and more convenient than traditional PINs or passwords. The survey also highlighted that consumers are more familiar with fingerprint recognition—32% having used it once or twice and another 63% using it regularly. By comparison, about 48% have used voice recognition in the past and 26% use it regularly. 

In 2010, Indian national identity card Aadhaar integrated biometric data to verify and identify cardholders was introduced. A total of 500 participants were surveyed by asking different biometric questions and it revealed some findings. UIDAI also considered people who find fingerprint identification and iris recognition difficult. The agency has introduced facial recognition technology for the Aadhaar card and the registration will possibly start very soon. According to the Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI), face recognition is going to help in comprehensive authentication of those who are not capable of biometrically authenticating themselves due to worn-out fingerprints, old age or hard work conditions. 

Another global study researching consumer perspectives on digital identity and authentication found that people now prioritize security over convenience when signing into devices and applications. Generation gap differences also emerged showing that younger individuals are putting less caution into the traditional password and are more likely to use multifactor authentication, biometrics and password managers to improve security. 

With millennials becoming the largest generation in today’s workforce, these trends have impacted how employers and technology solution providers offer access to devices and applications. Overall, respondents recognized the benefits of biometric technologies like fingerprint readers, facial scans and voice recognition, as threats to their digital identity continue to escalate.

eSSL Security is one of the leading biometric companies in India and has grown into international territories since its inception (2002). With the vision of being a top player on a global scale, eSSL has built in-house expertise to be the vision. With over 6000+ channel partners and 6 lakh customers, the network of eSSL wove itself due to eSSL’s support and proven technology solutions and products. eSSL being recognized as a recipient of prestigious “Frost and Sullivan awards”, has excelled in providing services and solutions with the knowledge of in house expertise. eSSL’s major contribution to government sectors has put the government one step ahead in terms of security.

Read More

The Door Locks Evolution- it’s safe to say we are now safer

The necessity to protect our assets and loved ones using door security is not a new notion. Various types of door locks have been around for thousands of years. About 600 decades ago, the Egyptians developed a type of lock that preceded our modern locks. This type of lock is often referred to as the pin tumbler. Made entirely of wood, this lock used pins inside of a casing. A wooden key would correspond to the pins and when inserted, would disable the pins allowing the user to open the lock. This mechanism was similar to modern locks.

Now, the majority of the keyed locks we see are mere customizations of this 150-year-old design. While things remained relatively the same for a long time, we recently saw another leap in the innovation of door security about 20 years ago. Approximately 20 years ago, a problem was afflicting the hotel industry. Door lock manufacturers realized that hotels needed a more secure way of protecting guests. To cope with this challenge, they introduced a type of lock that made use of the electronic deadbolt and electronic latch. 

The features surrounding electronic locks changed around 10 years ago. With the onset of the smart home concept, residential lock manufacturers realized that incorporating the commercial electronic door lock system into an affordable residential lock would make the door lock more convenient for customers. The homeowner can now discard the key and use other methods to lock and unlock different types of door locks. These innovations to door security include smart locks that can be opened with a password, RFID tags, biometrics, and Bluetooth connected mobile applications. 

We have reached a point where we can conveniently afford to lose a key. Few smart locks even have up to 250 individual codes so that you can track individual movements of those coming and going across the door. Few are even Wi-Fi capable so you can lock and unlock your door from anywhere with internet connectivity. Most smart locks allow us to integrate with other smart devices inside a room or building. 

Persistent innovations have brought door security into the folds of the smart building. With such advancements in enterprise security, it’s difficult to predict where we will end up. However, it’s safe to say we are now safer.

Read More

What makes Push Data Technology a future ready tool for Biometrics?

A systematic approach to managing the attendance of employees across various branch locations of an organization is a primary concern for most managers. The ideal solution for this problem would be the usage of push data technology to retrieve log data from the biometric attendance software. Push Data Technology is one of a kind advanced data retrieval and fetching technology. It allows work stations to simplify their complex way of maintaining employee records by providing a standalone solution that meets global standards. 

Biometrics is getting increasingly popular amongst enterprises as a security measure. Almost every other enterprise and organization whether big or small, has implemented biometric devices in their facilities. Storing such a huge amount of employee and visitor records separately in separate facilities using separate servers can get expensive for the management. These servers, in turn, would require regular maintenance too. 

eSSL’s push data technology provides the leverage of using a single central server for managing attendance records at multiple locations. It is easy to implement and maintenance complications are waived-off. All data registered on a device are directly pushed into a central server and hence can be fetched from the same server whenever needed. This makes the system perfect for organizations operating in multiple locations. Push data technology can be integrated with any ERP software like SAP, Oracle or any third party software. Also, the client need not have any software at their end too. Data can be pushed to cloud storage in real-time or in periodic intervals. All these features are made available at a very low maintenance cost. 

Push is modern event-driven technology. It is designed for faster work speeds and transactions. That is the reason why biometric time attendance systems enabled with push data technology is more reliable. Push data technology in biometric attendance devices enables IoT (Internet of things) which means plug and play implementation and smooth device connectivity, along with huge cost savings for the organization. When an impression is captured by a biometric time attendance system, push technology transfers (pushes) the data to the cloud as it happens. Thus guaranteeing real-time performance. 

Push Data Technology enables effective management of employees’ and visitors’ information. Apart from maintaining the time and attendance of employees, an organization can also generate reports effectively in maintaining its payroll systems along with a leave management system. This technology is a standalone global standard solution that lets the managers have peace of mind by cutting down unnecessary costs on extra systems.

Read More