LSA - The new authentication method.....

LSA – Laser Surface Authentication

Authentication is the act of confirming that a person, information or an object is genuine or real.

As we can see, in modern offices or high in secure areas, the access is only given to persons after authenticating the credentials. The examples of such authentication mechanisms are Finger print scanner, iris recognization, face recognization etc. Other unique properties like walking model identification, keyboard typing, mouse handling methodology etc are still in research phases.

But difficulties occur when we want to authenticate documents, prints, parcels etc.
We usually use traditional methods like Watermarks, wax sealing, RFID etc. These technologies are complicate to use and vulnerable too..

LSA comes with a different idea in authentication. Like humans, there are unique marks on paper, plastic, cards etc. which are microscopically identifiable. These uniqueness are created during the manufacturing processes. The way that the fibres appear on the paper or plastic contributes for this property. A laser reader is used for recording such marking. This information can be stored digitally in PC. Receiver can match the encoded information and authenticity can be assured.

The uniqueness is preserved even thought the object has undergone various external pressures like crumpling, scribbles, moisturising etc. This makes an important advantage for LSA over the traditional methods.

Other advantages include the low cost for the laser reader, low PC requirement, high scanning speed, can be applicable to a wide variety of papers, plastic cards etc.

History:
Prof Russell Cowburn has invented this great idea. He has a PhD from Cambridge. He is now the CTO of Ingenia Technology. Ingenia Technology owns the world wide patents to the technology.