Single Sign-On At Your Fingertips

DigitalPersona Pro is an enterprise single sign-on product that improves help desk efficiency by enabling users to log in using their unique fingerprints, obviating the need for new password requests, said Chip Mesec, senior product marketing manager at DigitalPersona, Redwood City, Calif.

With the unveiling of DigitalPersona Pro 4.0, the vendor has improved security by doubling the length of the fingerprint PIN data from four to eight characters, Mesec said. Other new features of Pro 4.0 include the ability to authenticate more users per server, faster user authentication and beefed-up administration tools, Mesec added.

DigitalPersona Pro consists of a client workstation and a server that attaches to a Microsoft Active Directory domain controller. "What's nice about Active Directory is that it maintains a security level and has policy provisioning and storage built into it," Mesec said.

For solution providers, flexibility is a key selling point of DigitalPersona Pro. For example, the solution can be integrated into a door lock system or as part of a time clock to monitor employee arrival and departure times, said Joe Gartner, sales manager at California Peripherals and Components, a Costa Mesa, Calif.-based solution provider.

The vendor's typical VAR partner has experience working with midsize banks and small hospitals, Mesec said. Larger solution providers such as DynTek, Forsythe, Technology Integration Group and Vigilar also sell DigitalPersona products.

DigitalPersona Pro 4.0 is available now and is priced at $60 for client software that's compatible with the vendor's readers and fingerprint-enabled notebooks, and $149 for a USB-connected sensor with the workstation software. The back-end server software costs $1,499 and can support up to 3,000 users per server, with licensing fees priced at $50 per user.