What is a Facial Recognition System?
A Facial Recognition System is an advanced technology solution that can compare and analyse facial features from live or recorded images or videos to match them with existing facial identity records in the database. A Face Recognition Attendance System incorporates five fundamental steps to authenticate employees’ identities and record their presence in the system:
Image or Live Snapshot Acquisition
Facial Feature Extraction
Comparison with Database
Identity Verification
Attendance Recording on HRMS
Facial recognition is fast emerging as a very popular category of biometric security and biometric attendance management systems. Face identification technology that once had its footprints in security and law enforcement, and in unlocking iPhones through the FaceID, is now becoming increasingly popular among Enterprises and Government Organisations to centrally monitor attendance and other HRMS functions.
What are the Benefits of Facial Recognition Systems?
Facial Recognition is an accessible and affordable way for corporates and Government organisations to authenticate the identities of their employees and other individuals, while providing high levels of precision and accuracy. Let us look at some of the key benefits of Facial Recognition Systems:
Greater Certainty
Facial recognition systems are more difficult to tamper with or manipulate, compared to biometric or QR code based authentication systems, and hence provide greater certainty.
Security
Facial Recognition, more specifically AI face recognition, has been acknowledged as a more secure person recognition method than conventional biometric systems.
Reduced Number of Touchpoints
Unlike fingerprint and QR code based person recognition systems, face identification systems do not require the user or employee to perform any specific action, like pressing the thumb or placing the QR code bearing card on the scanner. By simply walking through an entrance zone, monitored by surveillance cameras, users can undergo the face authentication in a seamless manner.
Easy Integration
As facial recognition attendance system takes simple camera feeds or images as input, it is easy to integrate for any business having an existing CCTV camera infrastructure with a fair resolution and camera quality.
How to Choose the Right Facial Recognition System? Top 10 Factors to Consider
While the key factors in selecting the right Facial Recognition System varies depending on the exact business requirements, we have covered the key parameters to be kept in mind.
Precision and Accuracy
Precision and accuracy of face recognition is the most critical requirement for any organisation. An unreliable facial recognition system can create confusion, compromise security and transparency, and lower the morale of employees (if their attendance is not correctly captured in the records). There are two forms of accuracy to be considered for selecting facial recognition systems:
- Software accuracy - The extent to which the face detection software is optimised for the chipsets and cameras installed in your premises, determines the accuracy level of the software. Most face recog softwares offer flexibility of working with a broad range of chipset and camera specifications, with a fair level of accuracy.
- Algorithm accuracy - The accuracy of the AI face recognition algorithm is very important, because a poorly tested algorithm can fail to provide the right accuracy even with high configuration camera and associated hardware.
Most businesses have to find a trade-off between the desired levels of accuracy and the consequent costs of data storage and processing.
Relevant Facial Recognition Features
While facial recognition solutions offer a multitude of features, there are two essential components that every facial recognition system must incorporate:
- Face Detection - The system must be able to detect single as well as multiple faces simultaneously, count the number of faces being recognised and send the necessary parameters to the Face Recognition algorithm for processing.
- Face Recognition - The system looks for unique face-contour and face-features that can be matched with pre-registered faces in the database, while adhering to the privacy and encryption standards, prescribed under the law.
Which feature will be more relevant for a business depends entirely on the particular use-case which the facial recognition system is intended to solve.
Security And Privacy
Since AI face recognition systems work with sensitive data such as facial images and facial features of individual employees, they are vulnerable to cyberattacks and other risks of data compromise. Hence face recognition and face identification systems must address the following issues:
- Infringement on Privacy
- Transparency and Bias Mitigation
- Misuse by System Administrators
- Technical Vulnerabilities
- Security Breaches in the Database
- Data Leaks and Frauds
- Imperfections in Identification
Performance Requirements
The Facial Recognition System is expected to have high accuracy in facial identification across different lighting conditions, camera angles, facial expressions and extent of face-coverage and deal with cases of ageing. The following factors influence the performance of face recognition systems:
- Surveillance Camera Frame Rate (Frames per second)
- Face Detection Speed
- Facial-Features Extraction Speed
- Facial-Features Matching and Recognition Speed.
Passive Liveness Detection
With frequent incidents of frauds and tampering of facial recognition systems coming to the forefront, Passive Liveness Detection methods have become a mandatory feature of face authentication solutions. These algorithms work in the background without alerting the users explicitly or requiring them to perform any additional motion tasks. As such, any malicious attempt to manipulate the system with attempts of face spoofing usually results in a failure.
Architecture Suitability - Edge or Cloud?
The architecture chosen for the facial recognition system impacts its security, performance and accuracy. Organisations can choose between Edge or Cloud based systems, depending on their performance expectations and cost implications.
Edge based systems offer the following advantages:
- Are more flexible as they do not require a steady internet connection for uploading data to the cloud
- Avoid security risks associated with uploading vulnerable information to the cloud.
- Operate faster as the entire processing operates locally.
- Are more accurate as there is almost no data loss.
However, Cloud based facial recognition systems can prove to be a better option in the following cases:
- Where the system is used occasionally and maintaining an in-premise storage infrastructure is an unnecessary cost.
- Where low-to-medium levels of accuracy in face identification are tolerable and privacy risks are minimal.
- Where the existing camera and hardware infrastructure is already cloud-dependent and the same cloud infrastructure can be utilised for the facial recognition system.
Hardware Compatibility and Devices Supported
It is very important to check whether the facial recognition attendance system you are choosing is compatible with your existing hardware infrastructure. It is recommended that you start with lower-performing hardware while deploying the facial recognition system in the pilot phase, and eventually supplement your infrastructure with additional devices and higher-performing hardware, once you intend to expand the scale of deployment.
Scalability & Integration Capabilities
Since most organisations start with the attendance management application of facial recognition and gradually expand the scope of application to more critical tasks like access control, store layout optimisation etc., it is important to consider the scalability aspects of the facial recognition system. The facial recognition system should be easily integrable with the access control and HRMS software being already used by the organisation.
Software Flexibility - Plug-and-Play or SDK?
Plug-and-Play API-based systems offer a fast and reliable authentication method with low deployment costs. Plug-and-play facial recognition systems like IDONE reduce programming and integration hassles, are highly scalable, and offer versatile deployment scope across single camera and multi-camera scenarios.
On the other hand, Facial Recognition SDK tools are more flexible and customisable, but involve significant implementation time and costs. Integrating the SDK within the existing HRMS or access management platforms within the company consumes a lot of bandwidth of the organisation’s IT team.
Fixed and Operational Costs
Since facial recognition systems involve long payback periods, and the resultant improvement is often not directly attributable to growth in revenue or profitability, the cost implications should be carefully studied before going ahead with the deployment.
The main upfront or fixed costs associated with AI face recognition systems are:
- Software purchase costs
- Hardware installation and cable-routing costs (if hardware is not already installed)
The ongoing expenses and operational costs include:
- Software subscription costs
- Server maintenance costs
- Hardware replacement and upgradation costs
However, if the organisation already has CCTV cameras installed in its premises, facial recognition attendance systems prove to be more affordable and cost-effective in the long run than other person recognition systems. This is because traditional options like fingerprint-scanning and iris-scanning based systems require separate installation of specialised hardware, involving high upfront costs.
Building the Right Facial Recognition Attendance System | Transline Technologies
At Transline Technologies, we have been building the most reliable and accurate Facial Recognition Systems for secure, seamless, and scalable identity management across your organisation. With minimal false acceptance and false rejection rates, our facial recognition solutions provide highly reliable identity verification, while minimising security risks by adhering to the latest data protection standards. Our multimodal biometrics solution, IDONE empowers organisations to integrate facial recognition with other biometric authentication modalities, while allowing for significant extent of customisation and scalability.
Get in Touch with Our Team to understand how you can enhance security at your business premises and enable a seamless attendance marking experience for your employees using facial recognition.
