UPEK Teams With Pay By Touch To Bring Biometric Security To The Internet

EMERYVILLE, CA – October 9, 2006 – UPEK®, Inc., the world’s leading brand of fingerprint authentication security solutions, today announced that the same level of user privacy and protection its biometric solutions have brought to the world’s leading consumer brands of PCs and USB devices has now extended to the Internet.  As announced today by Pay By Touch™, this unique hardware and software offering is being utilized by the new TrueMe™ service, the first on-demand biometric authentication service available over the Internet.

UPEK’s remote provisioning and authentication offering enables registration of fingerprint devices remotely and authentication of individuals with the simple swipe of a finger, allowing online merchants, banks, and service providers to reduce identity theft and fraud by ensuring that businesses and customers truly are who they claim to be.  Remote provisioning is based on unique UPEK technology that validates and creates unique, trusted service keys between each device and service provider.

”Our vision has always been for our authentication technology to evolve from securing the device to securing the network to securing the service,” said Alan Kramer, CEO, UPEK.  “Our success protecting computers and networks   has laid the foundation for protecting the Internet experience, and we are delighted to deepen our collaboration with Pay By Touch as they expand from innovating how transactions occur in stores to innovating how transactions occur online.”

Pay By Touch’s new TrueMe service (www.trueme.com) enables businesses to provide customers, partners and employees with secure and convenient access to protected and registered websites and online services such as online banking, e-commerce, and enterprise applications.  It supports notebook computers with UPEK fingerprint authentication technology available from most major PC manufacturers, such as Lenovo’s ThinkPad® T60 and X60 notebook PCs.  Pay By Touch is also offering TrueMe branded fingerprint authentication USB peripherals supplied by UPEK.
 
“We are working with UPEK to drive a fundamental paradigm shift in the way people prove and secure their identities online,” stated Jon Siegal, Executive Vice President, Pay By Touch.  “The hardware-based security architecture under UPEK’s sensors is ideal for our TrueMe service, and we are pleased to be working together to launch the industry’s first on-demand biometric authentication service.”

"We've known for decades that usernames and passwords are neither secure nor convenient enough to protect a user's identity or a company's assets", said Rob Enderle, Principal Analyst for the Enderle Group.  "Biometrics, properly applied, would seem to be the answer to this troubling user security problem.  As a result the TrueMe service enters a market in dire need of the capability it provides."

About UPEK

UPEK, Inc., a global leader in biometric fingerprint security solutions, offers integrated end-to-end solutions including comprehensive design & integration services to the world’s leading consumer and industrial products companies. UPEK solutions enable the strongest fingerprint authentication security available, packaged for high user convenience and rapid integration into existing products and network architectures.  The company has been pioneering biometric fingerprint technology since 1996 and shipping product in volume since 1999.  UPEK is headquartered in Emeryville, California, with offices in Prague, Singapore, Taipei and Tokyo. For more information, please visit www.upek.com .

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