Visitor Aware accepting nominations for its biometric school security giveaway

Phoenix-based Visitor Aware, developer of a visitor and volunteer management service designed specifically to help schools and daycares track visitors using facial recognition sign-in kiosks, has opened nominations this month to give a U.S. school district a free one year School Security subscription for a maximum of 25 locations.

The tablet-based solution prompts visitors to indicate where they’re going on campus and takes a picture of them and a scan of their driver’s license. The picture is cross-referenced with the national sex offender registry and government watch lists. Facial recognition data points from the photo and driver’s license information are stored on a cloud-based server. The system enables schools to maintain a list of banned visitors, administrators receive immediate notifications via text when a banned or flagged visitor attempts entry and continually updates user information allowing for faster check-in for return visitors.

Visitor Aware’s founders say it’s all about knowing who’s coming in and out of a given school. “Most schools have a security resource officer, so any time anybody checks in, they will be notified so they can stay on top of anybody who comes through the door,” Visitor Aware marketing representative Joanna Haugland told AZFamily.com.

While plans last year to implement facial recognition systems in some U.S. schools to improve security drew criticism from public policy experts and civil liberties advocates, in October Deep North launched a program to let schools test its facial recognition safety system and RealNetworks released its best practices guide for using facial recognition technology to support safer K-12 campuses.

Article Topics

biometrics  |  facial recognition  |  identity verification  |  school security  |  schools  |  tablets