AI-powered facial recognition has been getting bad rap lately due to some significant concerns about bias and privacy. But that shouldn’t deter data center managers from deploying AI-powered facial authentication technology.
Facial recognition gets its bad reputation when it’s used on unsuspecting members of the public, not on professionals working in highly secured environments like data centers. In the latter context, it’s used to confirm that people are who they say they are — for example, when employees, customers, or contractors attempt to enter secure areas of a data center. Facial authentication can also be used to track people as they move around inside a data center, or when they attempt to access particular server rooms or workstations.
Recent advances in AI technology — especially in image recognition — and in 3D sensors have made facial authentication easier, faster, cheaper, and more accurate than ever. Smaller facilities that aren’t ready to invest in the required hardware can take advantage of the facial recognition capabilities of employees’ personal or company smartphones.
Using mobile device-based authentication also eliminates the need for the data center to keep biometric identification information in a central database, which is a security risk. After all, it’s easy to issue an employee a new login and password if stolen, not so much a new face.
