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Biometric authentication technology developer KeyLemon announced the availability of a client-server architecture designed to facilitate rapid development and deployment of face recognition on mobile devices.
Through its Oasis implementation, KeyLemon helps developers build out a scalable, mobile-centric, secure biometric authentication platform.
The architecture supports both Android and iOS client operating systems, with a backend for Linux and Windows that can be deployed on servers at the customer’s location.
“There are several biometry technologies. KeyLemon focuses on face and speaker recognition. This is the most natural way humans recognize each other. It should be the same way when we interact with devices, such as mobile phone,” Gilles Florey, CEO and co-founder of KeyLemon, told eWEEK. “The main advantage is convenience and the natural way. Generally speaking, the combination of biometrics reaches a very high level of accuracy.”
KeyLemon’s approach to providing biometrics on mobile devices combines client-server architectures by splitting the tasks of biometric identification between the two systems.
Specifically, the client library can be integrated into native mobile applications and provides a graphical user interface (GUI), manages access to the camera, handles image acquisition and processing, offers liveness detection (to make sure the biometric sample submitted comes from an end user) and communicates to the server through a secure, encrypted channel.
The server then does rapid biometric authentication and sends the results back to the mobile application, with the process taking less than a few seconds.
“Security is certainly a main aspect users look for,” Florey said. “However, it is not about the most secure solution. In that case, we might have a solution being very difficult to connect and probably not working on your mobile phone. Users are looking for something secure and convenient, and are prepared to do some additional steps to increase security. Thus, speaker and face recognition is a good fit. For instance, face recognition doesn’t require any action from the user. The user just needs to look in the cameras [which is what he] is doing anyway when he is looking on the screen of his mobile phone.”
The company’s biometric technology is designed to eliminate the impact of password theft or phishing by supplementing legacy username-and-password logins using unique facial and voice data and anti-spoofing techniques.
KeyLemon’s multi-factor authentication provides security for sensitive user data while biometric verification prevents multiple users from sharing one ID.
The solution, which requires no unique hardware, works across computers, tablets and smartphones.
In addition, KeyLemon assists with compliance requirements in specialized environments, such as health care, online education and financial services by offering continuous verification with a hands-free interface.
“Health care is a scenario where we have sensitive personal data and device sharing. The employees face the problem of having very hard passwords to remember or may have a token to carry with them,” Florey said. “This is not very convenient and may provide some security and authentication problems. Having face and/or speaker recognition may help to keep an easier password and to add a secure, convenient biometric modality.”