NEC launches new face recognition system for computer security

Technology giant NEC’s Hong Kong branch is promoting a small, “easy to install” appliance which will enable businesses to monitor their customers based on facial recognition. From a recent NEC press release: “The new Mobile Facial Recognition Appliance enables organizations in any industry to offer an ultra-personalized customer experience by recognizing the face of each and every customer as soon as they set foot on the premises.”

NEC has launched a biometric security program that uses face recognition to unlock access to PCs. NeoFace Monitor is being billed as an alternative to passwords, which can be forgotten, stolen or guessed. Users simply look at a webcam on their PC to unlock it. The system uses face-recognition technology that NEC has been developing for some 20 years. It’s a software package that uses a computer’s webcam to verify the identity of a user by matching facial features to those in a stored image. “We have been working on biometric technology for police forces, and now we want to provide it to meet the security needs of business clients,” spokeswoman Naoko Ozeki said.