NIST Helping Facial Recognition Companies Solve Identity Spoofing Issues

The National Institute of Standards and Technology is helping facial recognition technology vendors combat identity spoofing through a collaborative research effort involving a facial recognition image database.

Patrick Grother, a computer scientist at the NIST, said vendors develop algorithms and technologies and send them to the institute for testing and evaluation. According to Grother, the NIST uses a classified library of images and software that only NIST researchers can access to verify vendors’ technologies and publish reports.

The end products provide information about facial recognition technologies that can be used to improve biometric policies and technologies and facial recognition implementation in national security and defense, among other applications, SIGNAL Magazine reported.

Government agencies have been adopting facial recognition and biometric technologies to support internal operations.

In November, Lynette Sherrill, chief information officer of the Department of Veterans Affairs, said VA hospitals could test facial recognition technology throughout 2024 to see if it could replace verification cards as a network sign-in method. According to Sherrill, facial recognition could make sign-in authentication more seamless and reduce employees’ reliance on usernames and passwords.