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The FutureNow List 2010

Authentication is the name of the game when it comes to bank security, and every advance in bank technology creates corresponding demand for security. Online payments, remote deposit capture, mobile payments, and even check and branch transactions are subject to continually-evolving fraud, and demand continually evolving security. The FutureNow List showcases the state of the art, and state of the industry, in 2010.

The tales of cyberheists and hacks afflicting banks and bank accounts almost cease to surprise anymore, and regulations and risk management hogged most of the headlines this year. But the pace of attacks on corporate accounts hasn't slackened, neither have the incidents of more mundane theft like check fraud. Some 73 percent of organizations experienced attempted or actual payments fraud in 2009, the highest percentage of organizations reporting such fraud since the Association for Financial Professionals began surveying its members six years ago. Some of the instances almost seem like parody: SecureWorks reported a check counterfeiting scam dubbed the "Big Boss" ring that created fake checks from images siphoned by hacking into a check verification and lockbox vendor; coincidentally, when the Financial Services Information Sharing and Assistance Council held its war games exercise earlier this year, they subjected participants to almost the same scenario.

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The Eyes Have It

Jeff Carter either is either in charge of selling the most transformational technology that will come to banking, indeed to human identification, in recent memory, or he's the most delusional former banker you'll ever meet.

Carter, a former Bank of America executive who once ran the company's partnership with MIT to create the Center for Future Banking, is now Chief Business Development and Strategy Officer at Global Rainmakers, a New York-based biometric firm that is convinced its high-speed, low-cost iris scan technology will be everywhere a decade from now-from identifying consumers at a liquor store to prove they're of age, to entering an office building, to paying for purchases online and at the point of sale. "We see this as being ubiquitous. We want to create a global identity service bureau," Carter says. "We're not talking about evolving, we're talking about a fundamental shift in the way everything takes place."

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Global Rainmakers partners with Portoss

Global Rainmakers has partnered with Leon, Guanajuato, Mexico-based information systems company Portoss on a project intending to make Leon the most secure city in the world.

The partnership will utilize iris biometrics from Global Rainmakers as the base of the security for all aspects of day-to-day life for Leon’s 1.2 million citizens. Portoss will integrate iris capability across the city, install miles of fiber optic cable and construct the central iris database with power to enlarge the scale to include private sector corporations for a variety of applications.

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Big Brother: Eye-scanners being installed across one Mexican city

By: Michael Winter
August 19, 2010
Mexico's sixth-largest city, Leon, is on the road to becoming a real-world version of Minority Report, the movie and short story that envision a future in which everyone is tracked wherever they go.

Fast Company reports that U.S. biometrics firm Global Rainmakers and its Mexican partner announced yesterday that they have begun installing iris-scanning technology in the city of more than 1 million in Guanajuato state, which the press release touts, without irony, as the place "where Mexican Independence was born." The companies aim "to fortify all aspects of life" to create "the most secure city in the world."

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The Iris Has It
Is Big Brother here? See for yourself. Look him in the iris.

By: Matt Gallagher
August 18, 2010
The biometrics R&D firm Global Rainmakers Inc. (GRI) announced plans today to roll out iris scanning technology to create, in its own words, “the most secure city in the world.” According to the technology news site Fast Company, it has partnered with Leon, one of the largest cities in Mexico boasting a population of more than 1 million people, to fill the city with eye scanners. Criminals will have their irises scanned automatically immediately upon processing, while scanning remains voluntary for law abiding citizens.

It's the future. Welcome to it. Eye scanning technology is here, creating game changing implications for law enforcement, banks and marketers across the board. Within a decade, you'll no longer have to carry your ID to the bar or your bank card to the ATM, as the truth of your identity will be right there in your eyeball.

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Iris Scanners Create the Most Secure City in the World. Welcome, Big Brother

By: Austin Carr - Fast Company.com
August 18, 2010
We've all seen and obsessively referenced Minority Report, Steven Spielberg's adaptation of Philip K. Dick's dystopian future, where the public is tracked everywhere they go, from shopping malls to work to mass transit to the privacy of their own homes. The technology is here. I've seen it myself. It's seen me, too, and scanned my irises.

Biometrics R&D firm Global Rainmakers Inc. (GRI) announced today that it is rolling out its iris scanning technology to create what it calls "the most secure city in the world." In a partnership with Leon -- one of the largest cities in Mexico, with a population of more than a million -- GRI will fill the city with eye-scanners. That will help law enforcement revolutionize the way we live -- not to mention marketers.

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Global Rainmakers Delivers World Class Iris Capability for Portoss
City of Leon, Guanajuato to create visionary secure city with iris scanning

NEW YORK and LEON, GUANAJUATO MEXICO, Aug. 18 /PRNewswire/ -- Global Rainmakers Inc. (GRI), a company revolutionizing the access control and identity management market, announced today that it will provide iris technology for the secure city initiative in Leon, Guanajuato, Mexico. Portoss, a Leon-based company, specializes in creating information systems for the law enforcement sector. This latest partnership between Portoss and the City of Leon is envisioned to create the most secure city in the world, utilizing iris biometrics from GRI as the foundation.

"This project has far reaching implications for the state of iris biometrics, the 1.2mm citizens of Mexico, and the world," said Hector Hoyos, CEO of Global Rainmakers. "The vision Portoss has for the secure city initiative, utilizing iris recognition to fortify all aspects of life, is in complete harmony with our own. The project will utilize GRI's iris technologies to identify humans in motion and at a distance while ensuring liveness. Their requirements not only fit perfectly into the core of what we do best, they provide the most secure system possible in identity management and access control systems."

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One on One with Hector Hoyos: Pioneer in the Biometrics Technology Industry

Hector Hoyos, born in San Juan, has been in the biometrics and information technology fields since the mid-1980s as the founder and president of various IT companies. He co-founded and presided over Biometrics Imagineering, Inc., creating proprietary state-of-the-art technologies, such as fingerprint identification systems and interactive financial transaction systems.

Mr. Hoyos also incubated, along with his partner, Dr. Keith Hanna, the Praetorian technology: a real-time video surveillance technology, (owned by L-3), which, in February 2008, was awarded a $325 million training/video surveillance contract by the US Marine Corps.

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Global Rainmakers Partners With Tech Imagine Inc. to Extend Iris Biometrics Banking Security Technology to Latin America

NEW YORK, July 13 /PRNewswire/ -- Florida-based Tech Imagine Inc. has selected Global Rainmakers, Inc. (GRI), an intellectual property holding company and advanced R&D laboratory, to provide cutting-edge iris biometrics technology into the existing banking security systems of their clients throughout Latin American and the Caribbean.

Tech Imagine is the largest distributor of Panini check scanners in Latin America, providing world-class service to leading companies in the financial services sector. They have achieved great success with deployments at Citigroup, all main offices of Banco Santander and Banco Azteca, and more than 5,000 additional installations across 7 countries.

The Company will work with banks across Latin America to establish pilot programs that employ GRI's iris biometrics scanning technology to enhance the security of these establishments.

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Global Rainmakers Grants APL Access & Security, Inc. License to Use Groundbreaking Iris-Based Biometrics Security Technology
Leading security integrator to leverage world’s best biometrics security technology on new and current clients.

NEW YORK – July 7, 2010 – Global Rainmakers, Inc. (GRI), an intellectual property holding company and advanced R&D laboratory, recently announced a non-exclusive channel distribution partnership with Arizona-based APL Access & Security Inc. (APL), to resell and integrate Global Rainmakers’ cutting-edge biometrics technology into their access control and security business throughout the U.S. 

APL currently provides integrated security offerings to their clients, which are in the commercial, industrial, and government sectors including the U.S. Border Patrol Headquarters, U.S. Customs & Border Protection Internal Affairs, ATF, Department of Energy, Department of Veterans Affairs, INS/ICE, Arizona Cardinals, Frito Lay, Inc., Orbital Sciences Corporation, City of Chandler, University Medical Center, W.L. Gore & Associates, Sanofi-Aventis U.S., Inc., Safeway Corporation, Abbott Laboratories, and many more.

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Global Rainmakers Partners with Hacousto for Launch of Their Premium Security Division

NEW YORK, June 15, 2010 – Global Rainmakers, Inc. (GRI), an intellectual property holding company and advanced R&D laboratory, recently announced a channel distribution partnership with Hacousto Group, based in Holland, to market GRI’s groundbreaking tokenless-biometric security offering to the Benelux region.

Global Rainmakers has created a suite of biometric products that meets the demands of businesses in both public and private sectors. The Company’s biometrics products are designed to uniquely recognize humans based on one or more intrinsic physical or behavioral traits, in this instance iris recognition. Generally, biometric solutions are often leveraged in identity access management and control systems. GRI’s iris platform provides the foundation to service billions of unique users across a global scale by leveraging proprietary image capture and matching technologies in a cost-efficient, easy to install and use fashion.

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NEW YORK, March 17 /PRNewswire/ -- Global Rainmakers, Inc., an intellectual property holding company and advanced R&D laboratory, today announced the appointment of Samuel Jeff Carter as Chief Operations Officer. In addition to overseeing firm operations, Carter will be responsible for new business development and the deployment of the firm's revolutionary strategy on iris biometric security applications within mobile services and devices.

Carter, 39, comes to Global Rainmakers with over 15 years of banking and technology experience. He is an advisor to emerging technology companies around the globe with a focus on identity and innovation. He spent the last six years at Bank of America, where he served as Senior Vice President for the Consumer Bank Transformation. In this role, Carter was responsible for examining the monetization of information clouds, the future of mobile payments and launching the first social media offerings for the company.  As a part of this breakthrough program, he founded the Center for Future Banking at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Media Lab, a first of its kind collaboration between the largest Bank in the world and a premier research university.  Carter developed this to fuel the innovation strategy for Bank of America and secured $25 Million in funding for research efforts that are projected to have major transformational impact on the Banking industry. American Banker named Carter as one of the industry's top innovators in its yearly ranking – ranking fourth and fifth in 2009 and 2008, respectively.

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