Dynamic new products increase security and help to fight crime

Preparing for a development meeting with Shamwari, the group in charge of managing the anti-fraud systems for the banking and retail sector, are ltr Johan van der Spuy and Roy Herselman of WWO and Riaan Liebenberg and Ian Summers of Solutionz (Pty) Ltd.

World Wide Objects (WWO), a private company resident at The Innovation Hub, has used its patent-pending application development software to deliver a fingerprint access control system for a gym at SASOL, and an anti-fraud system for the banking sector. The applications were developed in a partnership with MarPLESS and Solutionz (Pty) Ltd.

The WWO application development software allows for systems to be dynamically created from the micro to the macro picture, rather than the other way around as conventional development software requires. There is no database involved with WWO solutions. A dynamic electronic organism with its own information (data) and programmatic logic is created. This electronic organism has its own unique IP address that allows it to reside across the Internet or an Intranet.

In the case of SASOL, their system could be altered and evolved in real time to suit their business rules and applications. There are in excess of 5 000 fingerprint electronic organisms on a single Pentium PC. The algorithm for the fingerprint to be identified is broadcast in true parallel fashion to all 5 000 electronic organisms. Each electronic organism compares itself to the broadcast algorithm. A comparison and match takes less than a second, whereupon access is allowed or denied. WWO is currently working to extend this technology to 100 000 fingerprint comparisons in under a second per Pentium PC.

For the anti-fraud system, WWO uses the association capability of the electronic organisms to form unlimited associations with one another. This allows the creation of complex relationships to track and limit the damage that criminal organisations can do to the retail and banking sectors. Due to the fast-changing nature of criminal activity and patterns, WWO can evolve a solution in real time as the nature of the criminal activity unfolds. In this case the client was not able to give the total solution required up front, but rather opted for an evolutionary solution. There has been significant foreign interest in this software innovation.

According to WWO Director, Roy Herselman, "From our experience we feel that there is a very real need to develop systems capable of evolving with the organisation's business rules and procedures, and not to cast the organisation into a rigid mould as current software development technology tends to do," he said.

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