NEC develops secure biometric authentication with encrypted face data

Tokyo – NEC Corporation has announced the development of a secure biometric authentication technology that allows user authentication using encrypted face information. This advancement aims to mitigate the risk of misuse should face data be leaked, thereby supporting the expansion of safe and secure biometric applications.

The core of this technology involves encrypting all face information handled by service providers. This means that even if the encrypted face data is compromised, the risk of it being used for malicious purposes like spoofing is significantly reduced. Users retain a secret key for decryption, ensuring that service providers cannot access or decrypt the raw face information, offering peace of mind for users leveraging face recognition services.

While face recognition is increasingly adopted for identity verification, concerns persist regarding potential misuse if registered face data is leaked. This has led to a growing focus on technologies that can perform biometric authentication while keeping sensitive information, such as face data, encrypted. Homomorphic encryption, which allows computations on encrypted data, has been explored, but its processing speed limitations have restricted its use, particularly for large-scale identification.

NEC's innovation addresses this by streamlining the processing required for face recognition within a homomorphic encryption framework, making it suitable for large-scale (1:N) identification scenarios, which are common in facility access control and transaction settlements. The technology achieves this by first identifying promising candidates through simpler operations, substantially reducing the number of complex computations needed. NEC reports that for a database of 10,000 registered users, their technology can narrow down potential candidates in approximately 0.01 seconds, enabling face authentication processes in about 1 second.

NEC intends to further develop this technology by integrating it with its Bio-IDiom portfolio of biometric authentication solutions. The goal is to enhance the security and safety of personal information, entrance control systems, and transaction settlement processes.