INTELLIGENT BRANDS // Enterprise Security
POWERED BY
Surveillance evolves as cameras
get a brain
/////////////////////////////
Facial recognition is a fast-growing global
market expected to be worth over US$10
billion by 2025 as organisations seek improved
speed and accuracy in security systems.
“It’s a complex environment, and there is
some confusion in the market about what
constitutes facial recognition,” added Coetzee.
A
dvanced new facial recognition
technology is giving ordinary
surveillance systems the ability to
learn, analyse what cameras see, conduct
market research and even proactively
mitigate risk.
Video Surveillance systems are an
important step towards enhanced security,
but they have certain shortfalls – they
are very dependent on the ability of the
control centre and monitoring team to be
alert to every moment on every screen, all
the time.
“With surveillance cameras now in place
virtually everywhere, it becomes extremely
difficult to analyse who is where and what
they are doing, all the time,” said Marius
Coetzee, CEO of South Africa based identity
specialists Ideco.
“Essentially, advanced new intelligent facial
recognition technology uses Big Data
analytics, AI and Machine Learning to capture
faces, establish factors such as their age,
gender and ethnicity, analyse their facial
expressions and even match and identify the
person. And because it is constantly learning,
the more you ‘train’ the technology, the
better it becomes. There is massive potential
for this type of technology.”
Coetzee says that by adding intelligent
facial recognition technology to existing
video surveillance systems, retailers could
not just count how many customers
looked at a particular area of the store,
but also determine how many customers
came back more than once, conversions,
customer demographics and how they
reacted to the products – based on their
facial expressions.
“This means traditional surveillance
footage is typically used after an event to
support investigations.” This allows for highly accurate market
research covering not just customer
demographics, but also market sentiment.
Retailers could also blacklist the faces of
known criminals or fraudsters or receive
notifications when certain high value
customers enter their stores.
However, advanced new facial recognition
technology has come to market to add
intelligence to surveillance systems, allowing
for proactive monitoring and control 24/7,
automated facial wrapping and recognition,
and even highly accurate identification. At stadiums and public events, intelligent
facial recognition technology can be deployed
to identify troublemakers, manage risk or
identify and protect VIPs. And at casinos, it
could be harnessed to identify regulars, VIPs
or even people behaving suspiciously.
60
INTELLIGENTCIO
For safety and security, intelligent facial
recognition allows authorities to list
people of interest and be notified when
they pass a camera; or secure a region of
interest by triggering an alert when an
unauthorised person enters that area. It
can also complement existing biometric
access control solutions such as fingerprint
turnstiles, allowing the enterprise to identify
which employee committed a crime. At
international border posts and airports,
intelligent facial recognition is rapidly being
rolled out to confirm identity at passport
control as part of biometric-enabled ‘Curb
to Gate’ airport automation programmes,
which are expected to generate US$1.3
billion in revenue over the next five years.
“Because this technology is highly
sophisticated, it was previously only in use
by big-budget law enforcement agencies.
But the barriers to entry have dropped and
it is now becoming available to enterprises,”
added Coetzee. n
Marius Coetzee, CEO of identity
specialists Ideco
www.intelligentcio.com