The Pipeline

Jack of all scans

Scanning paper documents to create digital files used to keep feds busy enough. But now they need to collect all kinds of personal identity information from a variety of documents in accordance with government regulations such as the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996, the USA Patriot Act and the Check Clearing for the 21st Century Act, known as Check 21.

A new scanner from Panasonic — the KV-S1025C duplex color workgroup scanner — should make that task a little easier.

“We’re getting a lot of interest from a lot of different agencies in the government,” said Gary Bailer, product manager for scanners at Panasonic Digital Document Co. “They see real value in going beyond the traditional method of just capturing a picture of something.”

You can throw just about anything at this scanner, from plain paper to onionskin paper to embossed plastic ID cards. In addition, the scanner can handle papers and cards of different sizes, textures and thicknesses at the same time for automatic scanning.

“This scanner is designed to look at documents in a whole new light,” Bailer said.

The scanner can also combine the content of both sides of an ID card or document into a single electronic file. Traditional duplex scanners produce separate pages for each side of a document or card, and users must manually link them together.

The KV-S1025C can create scans in TIFF, PDF, JPEG or bitmap format using portrait or landscape orientation.

Another interesting feature is Panasonic’s multicolor dropout technology, which enhances the accuracy of optical character recognition and shrinks file sizes.

All of this functionality is in a compact device that can fit on registration counters or desktops.

Security at the fringes

Network administrators face an ongoing struggle to secure mobile devices, whose popularity continues to climb.

To help meet this challenge, Trust Digital recently released its latest mobile security software for wireless personal digital assistants and smart phones.

Trust Digital 2006 lets administrators easily implement and enforce policy-based security, and it meets Federal Information Processing Standard 140-2 validated encryption criteria for every major device platform.

The software also standardizes user authentication and device resource usage across the enterprise.