Punch clocks, personal computer codes and hand-written hourly reports are all ways employers keep track of their employees’ hours on the job. Most recently, fingerprint identification scanners are finding their way into organizations and more surprisingly, schools.

 

Instead of a teacher reading a roll call and taking a student’s attendance, new biometric technology methods are handing over the responsibility to the students to be accountable for “checking in” to announce they are “present.” Included in this fancy system is the ability for teachers, head masters and parents to log onto a “real time” website and check to see if their child is in class and not skipping school. Instead of identification cards, some schools are embracing other biometric technologies like iris scanning, claiming that it is actually more cost effective than using ID cards.

 

Employers of all sizes of organizations have implemented fingerprint identification scanners as their means for time and attendance authorization. Employers don’t have to worry about another employee helping someone out and fraudulently clocking them in with their key code, because each person’s individual fingerprint is their own unique code, unable to duplicate. Using fingerprint identification for time and attendance issues can save employers thousands of un-worked hours, that employees have fraudulently claimed.

 

There are more than employers and schools who take advantage of fingerprint identification scanning technology, for example, Disney World has annual pass holders use their fingerprints as keys to getting into the park, Charles Schwab uses fingerprint identification for random security checks and more and more laptop owners are installing USB fingerprint identification scanners instead of required passwords to let them into their system.

 

The human fingerprint has been used for centuries as a personal key, originally with wax imprints as the identifier, now with current technology ID cards and passwords may be tools of the past.