Amazon wants you to ditch keycards, and scan your palm instead to get into the office

Getting into the office could soon be as easy as scanning your palm, thanks to a new release from Amazon Web Services (AWS).

At its AWS re:Invent 2023 event, the cloud computing giant unveiled a business-focused version of its Amazon One palm-scanning biometric authentication tool that it says gives businesses a much more secure way to ensure only their employees are accessing office space and other facilities

Along with saving money previously spent on printing fobs or keycards, AWS says Amazon One Enterprise will also protect valuable data, helping stay protected from potentially devastating data thefts and leaks.

Amazon One Enterprise

Amazon One was first launched in September 2020, and became well-known for its use in the company’s Amazon Go grocery stores, best known for their “just walk out” policy, with purchases linked to a shopper’s personal account.

Given the number of costly data breaches affecting businesses of all sizes every day, AWS now says Amazon One Enterprise can be the perfect solution to eliminating unwanted access to buildings and online services alike.

The company says that traditional security processes, such as using fobs or badges, are becoming obsolete, as they can be lost, shared, cloned, or stolen, while PINs and passwords are easily forgotten, guessable, or shared.

AWS adds that many existing biometric authentication platforms, such as iris scanning and fingerprint recognition, are not always accurate. Instead, Amazon One Enterprise combines palm and vein imagery for biometric matching, using artificial intelligence and machine learning to create a palm signature linked to a worker’s existing credentials, such as a badge, employee ID, or PIN.

The company says this process is able to deliver an accuracy rate of 99.9999%, making it more accurate than any other biometric alternatives, including scanning two irises, and cannot be replicated or used for impersonation. 

Registration can apparently be completed in less than a minute, with each user’s palm data also encrypted using a unique key, which can be deleted either by them or an admin when they leave the company.

Amazon One Enterprise is available in preview in the US now, and will be coming to other markets later in 2024.

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