Fujitsu Appoints Charles Yanak as Dir. of Product Management and Partner Development

  • Feb 17, 2011
Fujitsu Frontech North America Inc. has appointed Charles “Bud” Yanak as director of product management and partner development. Yanak will report directly to Christer Bergman, vice president of Fujitsu’s biometric solutions, who joined the company in December.

Yanak brings more than 25 years of experience leading the successful development, commercialization, marketing and licensing of technology for security, electronics and industrial companies to his new role at Fujitsu. Most recently, he served as vice president of marketing for BIO-key International, a fingerprint biometric solution company. Before BIO-key, Yanak held executive-level marketing positions at organizations that include: BioLink, a biometric enterprise security solution provider; Iridian Inc., an iris biometric identity-solution provider; and Avery Dennison, a supplier of barcode-identification systems.

“The need for convenient and secure alternatives to password authentication has never been greater,” said Yanak. “PalmSecure technology fills a critical gap in existing market offerings and has been successfully deployed in a wide range of industries. With the right solutions, the right team and the right partners, Fujitsu Biometric Solutions is well positioned to make a significant impact on the security market. I am excited to join the team and look forward to helping Fujitsu further solidify its leadership position in biometric solutions.”

Unlike other biometric identification technologies, this solution uses contactless, non-traceable and non-shareable authentication methods, delivering security and privacy that is quite difficult to forge. The PalmSecure sensor uses a near-infrared light to capture a user’s palm vein pattern, generating a unique biometric template that is matched against the palm vein patterns of pre-registered users. The PalmSecure technology has benefitted organizations in a variety of industries, including healthcare, banking, IT, hospitality and education. It has successful applications in healthcare patient registration, time and attendance management, physical access control, government identity management, PC user authentication and OEM terminal devices, including point-of-sale systems and ATMs.

“Today, more than 2 million users in the United States and hundreds of organizations globally depend on Fujitsu biometric solutions for their security and authentication needs,” said Bergman, “Throughout his career, Bud Yanak has demonstrated his ability to successfully plan, execute and manage major global marketing and partnering initiatives, making him the perfect addition to our team at this important juncture in our organization’s history. On a more personal level, Bud and I have worked together in the biometric industry for many years, and I firmly believe that with Bud on board, we are poised for tremendous growth in 2011.”


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