The battle for securing your important data has always been an innovative one. At one point in history people just locked up their files in a safe, the bigger and stronger the better. Today with our digital data it becomes much more challenging, especially with the growth of the use of thumb drives and other portable storage devices. Encryption to safeguard this data from prying eyes is getting better and better, but some companies are thinking outside the box when it comes to making sure that only the appropriate people have access to the files. One of the more interesting ways to secure your files now includes facial recognition, where the computer's webcam takes an image of your face and compares it to a list of allowed viewers. Is it perfect? No, but the uses for it are futuristic indeed.
Securing A Thumb Drive With Facial Recognition Thumb drives are everywhere and losing one can be equivalent to handing all of your personal or company secrets over to the enemy. The new Lockface USB key holds on it a piece of special security software that uses the computer's webcam to photo the user's face. If it matches it allows the data on the drive to be decrypted and used. If it does not match the files stay safely scrambled and unusable. Securing An Entire Computer With Facial Recognition A few laptop vendors have already started to roll out computers with facial recognition built in. Acer, Lenovo, and others have incorporated the technology into their laptops with varying degrees of success. In these computers in leu of the traditional logon screen a user has their image taken by the built in web cam and verified by the system to allow access to their account.
Problems With Facial Recognition Software
The problem with facial recognition software should be fairly obvious, although it is not always the case many of these facial recognition programs can be circumvented using a simple photograph of the user. In other cases, the degree of error (both positive and negative) is too high for it to be a reliable method of securing important data. In the case of the Lockface USB key error rates are as high as 2%. This means that 2% of the time someone else will be able to access the secured data while 2% of the time the rightful owner will NOT be able to access the data. When used with other layers of security facial recognition software can be effective, but for the time being securing your files with facial recognition technology is probably not the best way to go.
