By Telecom Lead Team: NEC Corporation of America, a
provider of IT, communications, and biometrics solutions, has won a multiyear
contract from Western Identification Network (WIN) to modernize its multistate
criminal identification system.
The updated system will include identification
capabilities such as high-resolution palm and fingerprint matching and other
emerging biometric functions, disaster recovery facilities, and enhanced system
performance.
Members of WIN, a nonprofit organization that provides
identification services to the law enforcement agencies and citizens of its
member states, have access to approximately 28 million fingerprint records
of the Western United States.
WIN has served for nearly a quarter of a century as a
cooperative law enforcement venture that helps apprehend criminals that could
otherwise effectively disappear across state lines. We’re excited about the
potential our future holds with NEC, and look forward to providing continued
first-rate biometric identification services to our membership,” said Kenneth
E. Bischoff, WIN CEO.
This contract will move the existing WIN system to a
fault-tolerant architecture. Key elements of NEC’s cloud-based offerings, such
as FBI Criminal Justice Information Services (CJIS) -compliant data centers,
Network Operations Center, remote managed services, and server virtualization,
are used to increase system security, reliability, and maintainability.
Compliant with the FBI’s latest Electronic Biometric
Transmission Specification, this contract will also position WIN to take
advantage of identification services being implemented by the FBI’s Next
Generation Identification (NGI) system.
Use of WIN’S operating budget virtually eliminates the
need for upfront capital investment. We believe this services-based model
is a much more cost-effective way to help law enforcement organizations
implement and maintain biometric identification systems, and ultimately keep
criminals off the street,” said Raffie Beroukhim, vice president of Biometric
Solutions for NEC.
This updated system will provide our members with a more
accurate search engine that will save investigation time. And with NEC’s
service-oriented architecture members can expand their identification services
to include other biometric modalities such as facial recognition,” said Julie
Butler, Records Bureau Manager at the Nevada Department of Public Safety and
chairperson of the WIN Board of Directors.
