Facial Biometrics
Also known as facial recognition, facial biometrics allows your customer to securely authenticate themselves with a simple selfie, in seconds, and is among the most secure forms of identity authentication available.
Facial biometrics refers to a technology that identifies and measures key points on an image of a person’s face. This technology can identify human faces in images or videos and then determine if the face is a match to another previously scanned face (i.e., matching an image that appears on a user’s ID document with an image they capture live). Face biometrics can also search for a face among a large collection of existing images, known as 1:N (one-to-many) face matching.
Facial biometrics is part of the “what you are” category of authentication factors, which means it can’t be lost or stolen, and that the data stored for face matching cannot be reverse engineered to create a “real” image, thanks to encrypted algorithms and advanced liveness detection. It is one of the more secure forms of identity authentication in existence, particularly when used as part of a multi-factor authentication (MFA) solution. Face biometrics is also both inclusive and accessible, as nearly every smartphone released since 2010 has a camera suitable for facial biometrics.
You may be surprised to learn that scientists and engineers have been working with facial recognition technology since the mid-1960s. Our own internal team of scientists has been actively working to strengthen our technology since 2000 and has employed AI (artificial intelligence) and machine-learning to continually improve our technology’s speed and accuracy.
The U.S. National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) provides face biometrics benchmarking using their Facial Recognition Vendor Test (FRVT). Daon’s algorithm is assessed by NIST for both 1:1 and 1:N recognition. It has also been reviewed by the National Physical Laboratory (NPL) in the UK.
xAuth integrates facial biometrics in its authentication offerings as an MFA (multi-factor authentication) method.
xFace uses facial biometrics to provide highly-secure identity authentication.
xProof uses facial biometrics to provide instant identity proofing against an ID document. It can also integrate with xFace/xAuth to register the biometric for later authentication.Frequently Asked Questions
Is facial biometrics technology superior to other technologies used for authentication?
Yes and no. With all authentication processes, it’s about using the right tool for the right use case. In general, face biometrics is superior because it’s a physical biometric factor (part of the “who you are” group of authentication methods), meaning it can’t be lost, stolen, or forgotten. When combined with other authentication factors and other technologies, like the liveness detection used in Daon xProof, xFace, and xAuth, facial biometrics is an extremely secure form of identity authentication.
Will face biometrics work if my customer changes how they look (e.g., grow facial hair/get glasses)?
Yes. Facial biometrics algorithms are designed to take changes in appearance into account.
If my customer registers their facial biometrics, can it be stolen and then used to steal their identity?
No. Daon’s face biometrics stores data in a format that cannot be reverse engineered into an image; the data is also encrypted. Also, identity authentication systems like Daon xFace cannot be accessed by anything other than a live image.