Microsoft Entra Verified ID already allows businesses to check to see if a customer is who they say they are. It also allows people to sign into online services like banking or employee confirmation. Today, Microsoft announced a new feature for Entra Verified ID called Face Check for a new layer of security for online businesses and services.
As the name simply, Face Check is a facial recognition feature that"s similar in some ways to Windows Hello for signing on to a PC. In a blog post, Microsoft says Face Check uses the company"s Azure AI services to match a person"s photo to a verified image of themselves on a passport or a driver"s license. The service then gives a percentage of how the person"s just-taken image compares to their verified photo.
The company says this method of comparing a quick selfie on a smartphone to an already verified government image of that person "provides a crucial layer of trust, especially in high-assurance scenarios such as accessing high-value business processes or sensitive company information."
Businesses can use Microsoft Entra Verified ID with Face Check for a wide variety of uses. According to Microsoft, it could be used to generate passkey from businesses to employees or to reset a person"s password.
Microsoft adds it does not store or keep any data from a Face Check action, and the business only sees the percentage match between the new photo and the verified image. Face Image is currently in a preview mode, and is already being used by the IT service organization BEMO to check the identity of employees.
In the future, Microsoft the company will expand the use of the Entra Verified ID API to include checks of a person"s work history or legal entity information. We could learn about those efforts in the coming weeks.