Biometric Authentication: Why Face Recognition is Gaining Prominence

With the advent of smart devices, there came ways to secure your digital presence from unwanted access. This included manually typing in the PIN or drawing a pattern on our smart devices to unlock them. Besides being cumbersome, these methods are often prone to security breaches.

From cumbersome pins to a simple glance, facial recognition has rewritten the security script – Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Meta

Those days are behind us as we move into the world of artificial intelligence, which enables us to have face and image recognition technology baked into our phones. 

Identifying and verifying a person using their face made accessing smart devices much quicker and more secure. But is face recognition technology here to stay? What more could be done in this field to improve its application?

In this blog, we will explore these questions and show you how facial recognition has gained such popularity quickly. 

What Is Facial Recognition and Why Is It Important?

Facial recognition is a technology capable of identifying or verifying a subject from an image, video, or any other visual element of a face.

In general, we use face recognition technology to get access to applications, systems, and devices. The identification is made by measuring the facial biometric pattern and data through mathematical and dynamic patterns. 

So, why is facial recognition crucial? It is because facial recognition is the first stage of facial analysis, facial tracking, and facial detection, all of which have found increasing applications for multiple purposes like device unlocking, banking, tourism, law enforcement, and other industry verticals.

Apart from this, with the help of facial recognition algorithms, facial recognition technologies can detect which specific parts of a picture should be rendered and which ones should not be included during the processing. (Also Read –Understanding the difference between facial authentication and facial recognition)

When Did Facial Recognition Become Popular?  Why is Facial Recognition Popular?

Facial recognition has been in use for more than 50 years now, but recently, we have seen this technology being implemented on smart devices. Below are a few essential factors that resulted in facial recognition’s increased popularity. 

Protecting data and privacy

There is no doubt that facial recognition is a crucial part of information and communication technology as, over time and with the advancement in AI, it has become one of the strongest biometric authentication systems that keeps the data protection and privacy of a user interact. 

Higher accuracy

With the use of AI and Machine Learning (ML) in facial recognition, we now have a higher accuracy of matching the face in a moving video, blurry images, images taken from night vision cameras, and other methods. This enhancement in accuracy leads to facial recognition being adopted in various places where security is a significant concern. 

Enhanced capabilities

With technological advancements, more capabilities are added to facial recognition systems. Some of them store all the data in cloud servers so it can be accessed by anyone with the proper credentials.

Another significant development is the type of cameras that can be used for facial recognition. Now even a budget smartphone can use facial recognition authentication to give users access to their smartphones.

Increasing usage of facial recognition in security

Right now, facial recognition technology is being used by police agencies worldwide to find fugitives in public places. Other security service providers are also using this technology to provide enhanced security on the premises. 

Facial Recognition Market Size

Below we mentioned some critical takeaways from the facial recognition market size in 2022 that we believe everyone should know about. 

• Globe Newswire predicts the worldwide facial recognition market will increase from 5.1 billion US dollars to 19.3 billion by 2032. At the same time, the CAGR is estimated at 14.6%.
• In 2022, facial recognition’s 3D segment was able to generate revenue of 36.8%. 
• On the other hand, the access control segment of the industry took advantage of facial recognition in the application sector and secured 36% of the global revenue in 2022. 
• Facial recognition technology had the largest market share of 22.1% in the end-user market, which is e-commerce and retail of products. 

What Are the Benefits of Using Facial Recognition? 

Enhancing security and identifying criminals is one of the significant benefits cited whenever we discuss them. However, there are other benefits as well: 

Finding Missing People 

With facial recognition, law enforcement agencies can find missing people by checking camera feeds of various locations where they were supposed to be present lately. The added features, such as aging software, allow police officers to predict what children might look like by scanning their photos from when they disappeared. 

Missing children identification: Facial recognition can assist in identifying lost or missing children, improving the chances of safe reunification.

Protecting Businesses Against Theft

Many companies have not installed facial recognition as their primary means of biometric authentication. This way, only company employees can enter office premises, and people who have not registered in the data will not be given access. 

Reducing Human Touchpoints

With facial recognition as a biometric authenticator, we don’t need physical contact to authenticate ourselves.

Before facial recognition, users have to press their finger on the fingerprint to get authenticated. But now, they can simply show their face in front of a camera, and with the help of facial recognition technology, users will get access.