John Bond of Leicester University has developed a revolutionary technology that enables fingerprints to be taken from formerly impervious thermal surfaces such as credit card receipts and ATM statements, according to a recent, Science Daily, article

Bond says, the “new technology offers a new way of easily looking for fingerprints on an increasing source of paperwork that criminals are likely to handle when committing a variety of offenses.”.

In keeping with the European Union’s on-going quest to change the way data across the world is protected, the new technology was unveiled to the public at the Forensics Europe Expo  this past April.

We are excited about these two new inventions,” Julie Pratt of Leicester’s Enterprise and Business Development Office explained to Science Daily. Especially “as they further expand our portfolio of technologies that provide solutions for unmet needs in the forensics market.”

So what does this mean for companies who want to protect their physical operations center from thieves and the like?

Biometric security employs fingerprint scanning to protect important infrastructure like server cabinets, which can be an easy target for those wishing to harm a business. By controlling staff access through their fingerprints, A company’s security team will always know who goes in and out of the facility, and with what.

For some CEO’s, like David Orischak of Digitus Biometrics in Savannah, Georgia, it’s a step in the right direction, but companies still need to beef-up security in their own data centers. “You’d be hard pressed to name a handful of companies in our industry, focused on solutions for physically securing servers and cabinets,” something his company is highly focused upon. “At Emory University in Atlanta”, Orischak added, “each server cabinet can have up to $1.4 million dollars worth of equipment storing personal (health and financial) student and medical information. In stark contrast, it only costs $800 to biometrically secure the cabinet.”

Building access control and data center security are critical areas of concern to most companies and new technologies are addressing that but, as Orischak concluded, there are still many more hurdles to overcome, because, “those with malicious intent will attack the centers that are most vulnerable – the ones with lower levels of physical security.”

Federal regulators have not really delved into the ramifications of the new technology but have initiated a number of programs designed to keep companies aware of new threats and whether new software is legally viable for their operations.

You can check this federal website for more information on what’s current in federal regulations domestically.

Orischak adds that, overseas, the European Union is working to implement  new and updated data center security guidelines which will keep companies much safer and impose fine schedules of up to 100 million Euro or 5% of the company’s yearly revenues to those who do not comply with the new regulatory guidelines being established.

For further information regarding access control, click here