We need biometric technologies for numerous reasons in modern day society. With a lot of sensitive data requiring protection one of the most prominent use cases is its use in providing a barrier of security in face ID on smartphones, for instance.In this article, we will predominantly focus on the biometric modality of face recognition and authentication.
How does it work?
Biometric systems are built to capture, map and analyze a person’s identity through their own biometric stamp. In the event of face recognition, an individual will have their face scanned and analyzed by a camera equipped with an innovative AI system that performs the recognition test.Images can be captured in two or even three dimensions and compared against a specific database of faces. If there is a successful match, it will trigger authentication but nonetheless. Each one of us has a unique appearance and identity, and facial recognition software has been developed to recognize numeral facial features including:
- Spacing between the eyes
- Contour of the lips
- Shape and bridge of the nose
Face recognition systems have made such an advancement in recent times that it can accurately detect faces at various angles and even with glasses or a face mask on!
Applications of face recognition
We mentioned it above that there are various applications of facial recognition technology and one of these is the security for unlocking your smartphone via face ID. Nowadays, your smartphone contains all of our private information and losing it would quite frankly be a disaster. If it does fall into the wrong hands and someone tries to unlock it you want to keep this as secure as possible. Hence, why manufacturers of smartphones upgraded the phone unlocking process from pin to face ID because the latter is much harder to breach.Other applications include attendance monitoring via user authentication within the workplace. Accurately monitoring employees’ attendance can help improve your business’s practice by ensuring individuals know that they cannot get around trying to dupe their attendance. Outdated attendance monitoring methods such as clock-in machines are easy to fall victim to ‘buddy punching,’ unlike biometric identification.
Companies assess the algorithm production of vendors
Due to the popularity and widespread use of biometric technologies like facial recognition, there are a huge number of companies that provide this service globally. They all strive to compete against one another with the aim of producing the most advanced facial recognition code that is robust and delivers perfect performance.Due to the saturation of this industry, governing bodies such as the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) play a vital role in checking the level of code that these companies are producing. They assess numerous areas of biometrics and provide testing of different kinds. Vendors can voluntarily share their results for various tests such as here. A Facial Recognition Vendors Test (FRVT) is an example biometric assessment that NIST carries out, and within that there are different branches of assessment. You can even view another results example by clicking here. We are intrigued to see how this industry will keep evolving overtime and how these innovative companies improve the complexity of the algorithm code and software that they produce. Make sure to stay up to date!
