SBM showcases an Iris Recognition System and IBM Travel Kiosk at Riyadh GITEX 2004

Iris scanning is part of what is known as biometrics technology, the science of identifying or verifying the identity of a person based on physiological and behavioral characteristics. Physiological characteristics include iris scanning, fingerprinting, retinal pattern and facial appearance scanning.

The human iris, which is the ring of colored tissue surrounding the pupil has random patterns unique to each individual. It is a human "bar code" or living passport. No two irises are alike. Unlike fingerprints, iris 'prints' are not subject to environmental damage and because it is transparent, the iris can be easily identified with a high degree of certainty. Furthermore it is the most secure biometrics, due to the presence of about 266 measurable features that can be coded, even fingerprinting, the most widely used biometric measurement runs a distant second, with about 40 characteristics.

Iris recognition is forecast to be deployed in a wide range of applications in which a person's identity must be established or confirmed. These include passport control, electronic commerce, healthcare services, premises entry, access to privileged information, authorizations, government services, forensic and police applications, air travel, computer login, or any other transaction in which personal identification which currently relies on special possessions or secrets (keys, cards, documents, passwords, PINs).

Moreover, SBM, the leading information technology provider in the region, is also displaying at its GITEX Pavilion the latest IBM travel kiosk that has been deployed around the world in order to enhance the passenger travel experience by offering self check-in for passengers with offers of greater convenience, speed and without sacrificing the overall level of service that passengers expect.

The kiosks are based on either the IBM Netvista PC running Microsoft's Windows 2000 operating system with a touch screen interface or the IBM ThinkPad personal computer technology on the inside with an AIT passport reader and a Thallus ATB-2 printer. One of the more recent travel kiosks is the KLM e-service center, whose configuration uses IBM Middleware that will comply with the IATA Common User Self Service (CUSS) standard in the future. Furthermore, and as part of the continuous monitoring of the deployed kiosks, IBM provides a Kiosk Manager, which is an HTML based graphical tool for the remote monitoring of a network of self-service devices, thus ensuring continuous observation of the kiosks functioning with the least amount of down time.