Access control for buildings is nothing new. Early forms of security access for business security systems were introduced in the 1960s, as business owners and managers looked for alternatives to keys, as a result of needing to frequently replace them, when there was a change in personnel. It’s only in recent years that the urgency to implement smarter, more efficient, and convenient forms of access control has increased, in the context of public and private sector digital transformation.
Investing in new technology solutions
Upheavals from the COVID-19 pandemic have forced organisations to re-think, pivot, and invest in new technology solutions that will incorporate Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning, in order to gain speed in their operations, glean actionable insights from their video analytics, and enhance productivity with their teams.
As McKinsey points out in its top six ‘make-or-break’ priorities list for CIOs for the first six months of 2022, executives are urged to, ‘Make security an enabler of speed and growth’.
Biometrics-driven employee authentication
The biometrics-driven employee authentication is a huge step forward in the right direction
As a globally renowned company in facial recognition technology for access control systems, Oosto agrees wholeheartedly with this recommendation. And, the biometrics-driven employee authentication is a huge step forward in the right direction.
While companies seek to improve the tenant experience starting from the first foot in the entrance door of a commercial property to the exit, facial recognition-based access control can help transform the ‘so-so’ experience of entering, accessing, and moving throughout an office environment, using old, easy-to-lose (and easy to share) keycards or FOBs, to a state-of-the-art, frictionless experience with an added ‘wow’ factor that offers personalisation, customer service and an enhanced sense of physical security.
Frictionless access control
Frictionless access control, powered by facial recognition technology, is especially helpful in large corporate offices, where there is a high throughput of employees entering the building, during peak morning hours. This is where speed, accuracy, and convenience must converge, in order to deliver a great user experience, without sacrificing security.
Now might be the right time to make the move to face-based biometrics. Thus, Oosto offers the following 10 reasons to switch to frictionless access control in commercial buildings, in order to help summarise the best reasons to make the change:
- Be more secure: Employees can’t forget their faces. Face-based recognition ensures that only authorised employees and visitors gain access to the areas of the building, for which they have permission.
- Prevent tailgating and piggybacking: Mitigate the threat of tailgating through the use of a sophisticated AI system that detects when more than one person enters a door or turnstile. Tailgating and piggybacking expose a building to undocumented and unauthorised entry by individuals who could inflict harm upon the property and/or employees.
- Reduce false alarms: It is estimated that more than 90 percent of alarm notifications are false alarms. The stress they create causes an unnecessary burden for facility owners, managers, and building occupants, along with law enforcement personnel and emergency responders. Thanks to video analytics and machine learning, the systems can identify alarm patterns and provide insights on how to prevent false alarms or de-trigger them, once they’ve occurred.
- Deliver a frictionless experience: Instead of fumbling for a phone or a keycard, employees simply need to look at a camera (or screen), in order to instantly gain building access. With other methods, employees are asked to remove their gloves, find an app on their phone, or find their plastic keycard, which can cause unnecessary delays and create long queues. With face-based access control, employees simply need to look at a camera or screen, in order to gain immediate entry.
- Streamline visitor access management: Deliver a better and more secure visitor experience by capturing visitors’ faces and granting them access privileges to specific floors and spaces, during restricted time zones.
- Improve ROI: Generate higher returns on investment by eliminating traditional costs, associated with reproducing replacement plastic keycards and fobs, which are invariably lost or stolen. Face-based access control avoids these costs, since the face cannot be forgotten or lost once the biometric data is entered into the system. Plus, plastic card keys and fobs are continually being lost and need replacing. Leveraging biometrics means saving the landfills from more plastic and demonstrates, in a small way, a commitment to going green and reducing waste.
- Go Touchless: Eliminate the need for employees and visitors to touch any surface when entering a controlled space. Face-based recognition provides a frictionless access control experience that’s easy, fast, and reliable.
- Fight Spoofing Attempts: Protect against sophisticated spoofing attempts by choosing a solution that has liveness detection technology, so as to ensure every detected face is a real person vs. a spoof (e.g., a picture displayed on a phone). A good solution can identify spatial inconsistency in real time, by using an array of sensors that create a 3D map of a person’s face to effectively eliminate spoofing threats.
- Enforce Quadrant Control: Create enforceable, digital barriers without erecting permanent structures and get instant alerts, when unauthorised people enter a restricted zone.
- Enhance your Brand: More and more companies are trying to create an open and welcoming space while conveying they’re on the cutting-edge. Biometric-based access control enhances the overall aesthetic and brand image of your company without sacrificing on security, helping to create a warm and inviting space.