SAN ANTONIO, Texas – San Antonio City Employees FCU is puttingsecurity at its employees' fingertips. The $240 million creditunion recently introduced a new biometric technology system thatexamines a person's unique typing keystroke to authenticate users.It is using the BioPassword product from Issaquah, Washington-basedBioNet Systems LLC. For now it is using it to provide an additionallayer of security for its laptop computers. San Antonio CityEmployees FCU VP of Marketing Eve Hernandez said the CU wanted tomake its laptops more secure because they are mobile, used byvarious users, and employees of different levels have access tothem. “Users range from some of the executives to the trainingdepartment. Some are out in the field more like the auditors andtraining folks,” said Hernandez. With the HR department also usingthe laptops, there can be a lot of vital personal information beingviewed. Hernandez said if the information fell into the wrong handsthe potential damage could be significant. Credit unions haveadopted biometric technology in the past, but mostly fingerprintscanning, facial recognition, and some iris scanning. Andrew Tull,EVP of Sales and Marketing for BioNet, said every person has aunique typing cadence and “dwell” and “flight” time. The “dwell”time is when the user is pressing the keyboard, while the “flight”is the time in between. Cadence is the rhythm so to speak of thetypist. Tull said the technology started back in World War II whenthe military relied heavily on Morse code. The military noticed itwould have difficulty with codes when different code givers wereused because of their way of typing the dots and dashes. Somestudies were done by the National Bureau of Standards, the NationalScience Foundation and the Rand Group. Eventually the StanfordResearch Institute developed an algorithm for dwell and flight tocapture the unique timings of individual's typing pattern. BioNetacquired that technology and started going commercial a few yearsago. Tull said the technology has been shown to be 99.6% accurate.In order to get an accurate read on a user, they are required totype their password a minimum of 10 times so the system canrecognize them. Tull said even if someone watched another persontype their password over and over the chance they could mimic theirkeystroke pattern is next to zero. Since the laptops at San AntonioCity Employees FCU require a password, the BioPassword solutionmakes logging on to the laptops a two-phase authentication.Hernandez said what attracted the credit union to this technologyis it didn't require any additional hardware as say fingerprintscanning would. All that is required is the BioPassword software.The solution is also affordable, said Hernandez. Pricing isapproximately $30 to $40 per users, however BioNet does not chargean initial installation fee which is common with most solutions.There is an annual maintenance fee of 15% of the total price. Tullsaid BioNet is seeing a lot of interest from the financial servicesindustry and the health care industry in particular. He noted thatthe technology also has consumer potential for things such asonline banking. Hernandez said she can envision the day where thecredit union may roll out the product for its members in some form,whether it be online lending or online banking, or maybe branchapplications. San Antonio City Employees FCU is often on theleading edge of technology. “We have consistently been ahead of thecurve on new technology products. We were the first credit union intown with a debit card, we were early in the game with the Web andonline banking,” said Hernandez. [email protected]