DigitalPersona software replaces the standard Windows logon
Hawthorn Medical Associates moves from reusable passwords to fingerprint biometrics for online medical 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.
While this works well for internally managed applications under direct supervision of the Hawthorn IT department, a glitch can come up with externally hosted applications, such as the Medical Records System hosted by PartnersHealthcare in Boston, with which Hawthorn is affiliated.
“It’s Web-based, and if they change the templates when changing the server and don’t tell us about it, we might lose biometrics for a day,” Tomawski said.
But the fallback position to passwords, when necessary, isn’t difficult, because DigitalPersona doesn’t eliminate passwords but enforces use of biometrics to make use of them transparent to the user.
Biometrics requires some additional administration, such as registering user fingerprints, but Tomawski says one of the main factors in considering biometrics is that the equipment and software does add expense over simple passwords.
DigitalPersona, for instance, charges $60 for its DigitalPersona pro 4.0 Client Software, $149 for its workstation package, and $1,499 for the server, plus additional fees for maintenance and support.
