Biometric facial recognition is becoming an increasingly popular mechanism for authenticating users in online and mobile environments. In addition, it is continually being adopted for physical access control, whether at border controls such as airports or within secure facilities to enforce strict access control (and/or time and attendance tracking) to sensitive rooms or areas. In this paper, we look at the current state of play with facial recognition and its potential applications as a secure authentication mechanism.
This paper is aimed at IT practitioners tasked with implementing, testing, or looking to use facial recognition biometrics as an authentication mechanism in physical and/or logical systems or applications. The paper should also be useful to anyone interested in learning more about facial recognition in general, with specific focus on the security merits and limitations of facial recognition systems.
