Investing in office security is crucial for small and large companies alike.

A secure and robust visitor management system must effectively counter any potential modern-day threats, which are no longer limited to unauthorized entry into the premises. Offices, even those situated in well-developed industrial areas, are vulnerable to terrorism, theft, commercial espionage, vandalism, and fraud.

The regular practice of issuing identification badges and key fobs to every visitor entering the office building is still being followed; however, today’s technology has stronger, more secure solutions to choose from.

Facial recognition technology solutions are rapidly gaining popularity for providing a much more effective and reliable process of tracking visitors and developing a security check. The automatic system of capturing facial identification offers an additional layer of protection to the entire office premises’ security system.

How do facial recognition tech solutions work?

Facial recognition technology is a biometric application that captures and identifies a person using a facial digital image.

To capture the face print, the individual needs to stand in front of a mounted digital camera that is connected to a computer system. After capturing the digital image of the individual from different angles, it creates a computerized faceprint and securely stores it in a database. This data is synced with other details of the individual for ease of identification in the visitor management system.

A numerical code is often used to capture the digital print of a human face that studies different facial features including the jawline, cheekbone, nose, forehead, mouth, and shape of the face. This helps in concentrating on certain features of the face of an individual that sets them apart from other people.

Being ahead of conventional scanners

It’s one step ahead of the regular fingerprint or retina scanners that are often used in biometric verifications. Facial recognition technology is considered less intrusive and offers a seamless verification. When employed in visitor management system, facial recognition technology provides a much safer, more electronically prudent, reliable method of tracking office visitors.

Image courtesy of Healthcare IT News

6 ways facial recognition technology improves office security

The following six ways highlight how facial recognition technology can help your office become more secure and less prone to unforeseen circumstances.

1. Access control

One of the most significant features of facial recognition technology in a visitor management app is the optimum access control. The usual systems, like fingerprint sensors or simple plastic swiping cards, can be easily manipulated. Facial recognition technology counters the drawbacks of traditional systems in a more effective way.

Face matching allows the system to adopt a more reliable approach in granting access and permission to an individual. It makes the entire security system robust and provides the administrator a greater control. Oftentimes, in large establishments, there are different levels of employees who might not be aware of out of bounds areas for them.

Facial recognition software diligently takes care of this situation without the establishment having to confront employees daily about an issue that can be so easily taken care of by a software.

2. Visitor and employee tracking

Tracking the location of any visitor or an employee inside the office building can be challenging, and next to impossible in case of large premises. Many cases require tracking of visitors and employees.

These cases are as follows:

• Employees and visitors are prone to wander off in big establishments, explore the premises, and even in some cases, get lost. Using facial recognition not only helps in assessing the ratio of employees and visitors being present in places they should not be, but it also helps establish an extra layer of security because of the adept and smooth tracking through facial recognition.
• Even though most of the visitors and employees always check-in using a manual process, they often miss check out. Facial recognition technology can help track the movements of visitors and employees and can automatically record their time stamps of entering and exiting the premises.
• For optimum security, tracking can assist in keeping a record of which visitor or employee is still inside the building or which one has already left through CCTV cameras. Using face prints, company staff can also keep an eye on any unauthorized entry in the building at any given point in time.
• Through facial recognition, companies get notified immediately if there are any unknown entities entering in a specific area that is unauthorized for their entries. It helps in keeping track of the trajectory of any employee or visitor making any unauthorized entry for security purposes. It helps in avoiding any confusions and in some cases, crimes. 

3. Convenient blacklisting feature

Many companies also use blacklist features in order to mark certain people to keep track of their presence at any time on their premises. When any person on a blacklist enters the premises of a company, facial recognition instantly matches their face in their database and notifies the company of the presence of the blacklisted person. This helps the security to track the movement of the said person and see if any delinquent activities are being performed by them.

4. Complete security automation

A visitor management system with facial recognition technology facilitates complete automation in establishing a reliable security system. It eliminates the requirements of manual interventions for every step of identification and is especially beneficial in the case of re-visitors. Even with employees, using a swapping ID card may not be enough for tracking their activities. 

Employees or visitors with access to someone else’s ID card can enter places even when they’re not meant to be on the premises. A facial recognition system instantly analyzes this anomaly and notifies the proper channels.

5. Intelligence tools

Facial recognition system for digital reception can be immensely beneficial as an intelligence tool as well. It can assist the office security staff in managing any suspicious situations by tracing activities inside the building automatically.

Using a facial recognition system, office administration staff can spot and recognize potential threats in real time. It can also help offices in tracking the whole trajectory of the visitors or employees who might have visited the office at the wrong, or unmandated time. The facial recognition system itself analyzes suspicious entries in the offices and notifies the suitable person or the security of the same. 

Here’s a breakdown of a scenario and how it can be beneficial for your office:

• If an employee enters the office of their manager while they are not present in their office, it may count as a suspicious activity.
• Facial recognition system instantly catches this and notifies the manager of the presence of a person in their office when they are not there. This process helps big companies especially, where keeping employees and visitors' movements under a close eye is important in helping avoid any thefts or mis happenings.
• The intelligence tool analyzes these kinds of situations promptly and keeps the company/organization up to date.

Image courtesy of TechSpot

6. Increasing staff proficiency of security and productivity

Elaborating on security automation, another added advantage of this feature is that it enables an automated system, which not only reduces the overall cost incurred in office security but also enhances the productivity of the staff. It can even reduce the complications of checking in and checking out for the employees, as it can track their facial markers at the entry and exit points and automate the whole process for them.

Even for security departments, facial recognition systems help in creating a process that makes it easier to smoothly analyze multiple data points at once, further helping the security being accurate, aware, and precise. 

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Integrating facial recognition technology in your office

Integrating facial recognition technology with front desk security management comes with endless possibilities and allows offices to establish a secure system. The fully automated integration process is easy and promises to improve the existing security system of an office significantly. When enabled for official staff, it can also be highly effective in dealing with potential cases of time-fraud, often observed in offices in the form of buddy punching and card swapping favors.

One of the most prevalent issues in any organization, a facial recognition system eliminates buddy punching so that organizations can keep track of the number of hours every employee is putting in. Even with card-swapping favors, many employees or even visitors get to access certain places in the offices or establishments they are not meant to.

With the help of facial recognition systems, not only is this issue takes care of, but it also helps in establishing certain norms for the employees and visitors which help in segregating certain places and keeping them secure from any unauthorized entries. 

Conclusion

Choosing the correct visitor management system depends upon how flexible it is, especially for big businesses, organizations, and companies. The major element that helps in improving the security of an office is facial recognition.

A good visitor management system always will have an option to integrate facial recognition into the system, hence, helping in building a reliable system integrated with sophisticated security features and modern technology.

Facial recognition technology has been changing the landscape of security services since its inception. It is the least intrusive method in existence for security, with the employees and visitors not having to go through rigorous processes of fingerprint scanning, eye scanning, and so on.

Introducing this feature into your visitor management system can reap you many benefits hitherto mentioned in this blog, ultimately improving the functioning of your establishment and improving your office security. 

If you want to learn about the highest-rated image recognition software solutions, G2 has you covered with options for your business. Keep security top-of-mind and find a provider for yourself today.