Hawthorn Medical turns to biometrics for network security

DigitalPersona software replaces the standard Windows logon

The doctors at Hawthorn Medical Associates wanted something simpler than multiple passwords to get to their online patient records.

John Tomawski, the network administrator there, is working to switch the Dartmouth, Mass, healthcare provider to fingerprint biometrics, a more secure authentication method that gave medical staff a single-signon capability.

First rolled out this spring in the new medical building, the biometrics system let doctors and medical staff in the new patient-exam rooms gain single-signon access to authorized applications via a finger placed on one of DigitalPersona’s external readers or fingerprint readers built into PCs.

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The doctors at Hawthorn Medical Associates wanted something simpler than multiple passwords to get to their online patient records.

John Tomawski, the network administrator there, is working to switch the Dartmouth, Mass, healthcare provider to fingerprint biometrics, a more secure authentication method that gave medical staff a single-signon capability.

First rolled out this spring in the new medical building, the biometrics system let doctors and medical staff in the new patient-exam rooms gain single-signon access to authorized applications via a finger placed on one of DigitalPersona’s external readers or fingerprint readers built into PCs.

About 40% of all the hospital’s computers can now be accessed via fingerprint biometrics. While medical personnel appreciate the ease and security of biometrics, Tomawski said deploying it can be challenging — and he warned of “lessons learned” in tackling unexpected glitches.

“If the temperature of the hand is too cold, it won’t work,” Tomawski said. “And it has to be a soft touch. It doesn’t recognize a hard touch.”

The biometrics system, which is based on the DigitalPersona client/server software, replaces the standard Windows logon and lets the doctors and other medical staff share a workstation via fingerprint match to gain access to dozens of applications.

The DigitalPersona architecture allows the group policy in Windows Active Directory to be used as the individual rights’ policies for biometrics. And DigitalPersona uses “templates” to let administrators specific fingerprint authentication for specific logon screens and Web pages, which are stored in administrative tool’s folder.