NEC Corporation (NEC) announced on the 26th that it has created a new biometric digital signature technology. This technology allows for facial authentication without storing any facial data, while still being very accurate. This innovation enhances security by minimizing the risk of facial data leaks.
The new technology creates a unique key for each person using facial data. It works even if there are changes between registration and authentication. This method is different from standard facial recognition. It doesn’t require storing facial data. Facial features can change with expression, head position, and lighting. This means there’s a risk of mistakenly creating a key for someone else. NEC created a special algorithm. It generates a unique key for each person, even with different variations. If the algorithm finds big changes from the original registration, it sees the individual as different. This stops wrong key generation.
This technology ensures authentication accuracy comparable to traditional facial recognition methods. It optimizes processing efficiency by matching keys with small changes. This approach allows for fast authentication, even in large-scale applications. NEC added a secure computation method to stop key leakage. This method lets encrypted matching happen safely. This keeps all authentication steps safe. It starts with changing facial data into a key and ends with the final match. Everything stays encrypted, which reduces the chance of key exposure. This way, we have a secure system for authentication.
Beyond facial authentication, this technology is adaptable to other forms of biometric authentication. It also supports standard digital signature methods like ECDSA and EdDSA. This means you can use it to verify electronic documents, contracts, digital asset transactions, and digital certificates. NEC will start demonstrating the technology for payments and access control in fiscal 2025.
