Yaletown residences believed to have the first building-wide biometric access control system in Vancouver
Michael Kane
Sun
True luxury living means never having to lift a finger, except to get into your ultra-exclusive condo.
Developer James Schouw is raising the quality bar to a new threshold for these security-conscious times by offering fingerprint-only access at his high-end Grace project in Yaletown.
Buyers don’t have to worry about keys or remote control entry devices which can be lost, forgotten or stolen. Instead they pass a finger over a palm-sized reader and, open sesame, they are in.
It is believed to be the first residential building-wide biometric access control system in Vancouver.
The Grace also has a conventional front door lock, but the only key, in case of an emergency, is held by the fire department. Letter carriers, cleaners and other service providers need their prints scanned to get limited access to certain parts of the building at certain times.
The system keeps a record of who entered the building and when, and security is further enhanced by video surveillance, motion sensors and alarms.
Schouw says he chose the system because he wants “only the best” at the Grace, and other systems are vulnerable if keys or remote control entry devices fall into the wrong hands.
“You can’t loan out or lose your fingerprints,” he said. “And there is a huge convenience factor as well because people no longer have to worry about safeguarding their keys or being locked out late at night.”
Schouw most recently developed the Iliad, a luxury boutique residential project on Homer Street, and he says nobody in his buildings should ever have their car broken into, which is Vancouver‘s most familiar security threat.
However, terrorism is on the mind of Warren Kimmel, the system’s installer and CEO of Vancouver-based Fingerprint-IT, the North American headquarters of a family-owned company based in crime-plagued Capetown, South Africa, one of the toughest security markets in the world.
Kimmel, 35, immigrated to Canada two years ago and says Canadians are becoming more relaxed about biometrics since 9/11 and with the recent London terror attacks, although there are lingering “Big Brother” concerns that he describes as a perception problem.
The system does not store fingerprints but rather a mathematical algorithm based on each finger’s unique loops and swirls. “All that is stored in the computer is a string of numbers. If you hacked it, you could take the numbers but you couldn’t replicate the fingerprint.”
His firm uses hardware developed by government contractors in Israel and France and tested to defeat TV-style capers such as photographs of prints moulded onto wax fingers. Fingerprint-IT provides the scanning and software support.
Users record details from one or two fingers on each hand, in case they are wearing a Band-Aid one day, or don’t want to switch packages from one hand to another. Guests who need independent access can be added to the system for the duration of their stay.
The whole package for a building costs between $10,000 and $20,000, comparable to the cost of a good key fob system, depending on the number of scanners required, Kimmel said.
LET YOUR FINGERS DO THE UNLOCKING:
Vancouver-based Fingerprint-IT’s biometric access system means never having to fumble for your keys.
– System tracks who entered the building and when.
– Fingerprints are not stored, instead a mathematical algorithm based on each finger’s unique loops and swirls is used. Hackers thus cannot replicate the print.
– Users record details from one or two fingers on each hand, in case they’re wearing a Band-Aid or carrying parcels.
– Guests who need independent access can be added to the system for the duration of their stay.
© The Vancouver Sun 2005
