Categories: Analytics

Truly Open, Truly Trusted at Identity Week 2022

Posted by Kathleen Kiernan on Posted in Analytics, Biometrics, Cloud, Conference, Customer Experience, Government, Law Enforcement, Security Tagged , , , , , , ,

In the spirit of “asu,” the Japanese word for tomorrow, NEC was proud to be the title sponsor for Identity Week as we look forward to the future of digital identity and biometrics.

Formerly known as Connect ID, Identity Week connects identity professionals from across government, finance, retail, eCommerce, health care, and travel. More than 1,000 attendees from around the world were at the event in October at Walter E. Washington Convention Center in Washington, DC.

Kicking off Identity Week, David Pekoske, Administrator of the Transportation Security Administration (TSA), shared staggering numbers. On Labor Day weekend, 8.76 million travelers were screened by TSA. That’s up 102% from pre-pandemic levels. To effectively screen the growing number of passengers, TSA will deploy more biometric technology so that travelers have safe and seamless experiences.

Administrator Pekoske also gave us insight into the TSA Innovation Task Force’s plan for an upcoming “innovation doctrine” that will help guide future technology projects to integrate new hardware and software. This forward-thinking approach to digital transformation will ensure that travelers have a safe and convenient “curb-to-gate” travel experience in airports.

Mind the Trust Gap
I was honored to present the opening keynote, “Mind the Trust Gap,” spotlighting digital ID within the federal and aviation sectors.

NEC’s vision of being truly open, and truly trusted is one of our strengths as a 123-year-old company. We continuously look to asu (tomorrow) and the possibilities of the future, prioritizing trust, security, and seamless experiences. I challenged the audience to not only build on current technologies but to also widen our aperture and think about the threats of tomorrow. Asu is NEC’s commitment to outside-the-box thinking to develop solutions at the speed of need.

Convergence of Online and Offline ID
“Decentralized ID is our vision for secure, self-sovereign, and standardized digital ID.” NEC Vice President Micah Willbrand gave the summit speech on the convergence of online and offline identities, the evolution toward decentralized digital ID, and how it’s being used in retail, aviation, and other applications. He stressed that the public sector should look toward the private sector as more consumers demand streamlined experiences.

Digital-Enabled Citizen Experiences
Austin Park, Director for NEC National Security Systems (NEC NSS), participated on a panel about digitally enabled citizen experiences. Austin predicts, “Decentralized identity will become much more prevalent in the next five years due to its privacy-by-design nature.”

Beyond Digital Identity
NEC Labs President Chris White led a seminar pointing out the importance of “applying real-time methods of sensing people and the environment to make accurate and efficient authentication systems.” NEC Labs is the U.S.-based center for NEC Corporation’s global network of research laboratories. NEC NSS and NEC Labs work in tandem on innovative biometric solutions.

Harnessing AI to Enhance Customer Experience
NEC Labs also invited attendees to try their luck with our AI-driven golf putt analyzer. Executive Vice President Keith Terreri demonstrated his golf skills and got an insight into his swing, body movements, and positioning. It was a fun, interactive way to showcase the technology and how it can be applied to enhance digital ID, security, and customer experience.

Being with our peers at Identity Week was inspiring and energizing. There were spirited discussions about Next Gen identity verification, which reinforces our mission at NEC NSS to apply scientific curiosity with the flexibility to rapidly prototype custom solutions. We look forward to next year’s event!

Discover more about NEC National Security Systems or contact us directly.

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How Artificial Intelligence Can Take Customer Service to New Heights

Posted by Jessica Andrews on Posted in Analytics, Cloud, Contact Center, Customer Experience, Hospitality Tagged , , , ,

A Look at the New Interaction Analytics and Evaluator AI Features in UNIVERGE BLUE ENGAGE

You have probably heard some of the recent buzz around Contact Center Artificial Intelligence (AI) – how it is the wave of the future for Contact Center technology and smart business. Emily Potosky, Senior Research Principal for Gartner’s Customer Service & Support practice, describes in the 2022 Gartner report entitled “3 Ways AI Benefits Customer Service Organizations” that “Customer service and support leaders are optimistic about the value AI can provide and plan to substantially increase their adoption of AI capabilities over the next two years.” At the same time, she explains how there are conflicting messages about the real benefits of AI and the right solutions in which to invest. According to the report, insights, user experience, and process improvement are three key ways that AI can benefit customer service organizations going forward.

Contact Centers as Critical Touchpoints

As you certainly know, your business thrives on creating and retaining satisfied customers. Your Contact Center is a critical customer touchpoint, where the quality of your interactions can determine whether a customer becomes a passionate, lifelong company advocate or chooses to exit your customer base forever. This is why the power of AI to offer accurate insights into your Contact Center’s daily customer interactions is an appealing way to maintain oversight and drive continuous improvement for customer service, experiences, and processes.

Consider the immense value it would have if your organization could gather meaningful, actionable insights from the voluminous inbound and outbound calls your agents handle each day. Your collection of customer conversations holds tremendous value. However, no one in your organization has the time to review each and every customer conversation manually, and random sampling will simply provide an incomplete picture. The beauty of AI is that it makes the impossible possible.

Gather Actionable Insights and Enhance Customer Experiences with UNIVERGE BLUE ENGAGE

UNIVERGE BLUE ENGAGE from NEC is a Contact Center as a service (CCaaS) solution offering not only the benefits of enhanced call center functionality and remote-office flexibility for a low monthly fee per user, but also a powerful suite of AI features that are reason enough to move your entire Contact Center to the cloud today.

The Interaction Analytics feature for ENGAGE uses Artificial Intelligence to enable Contact Center supervisors and your leadership team to easily identify and focus on those conversations that matter the most to your business. By analyzing and tagging customer conversations for sentiment and designated keywords, the guesswork eliminated. Supervisors can gather powerful insights about customer experiences, review recorded and transcribed conversations of interest, act quickly to address trends or issues they see, and move your business ahead of customer demands and expectations. Insights from ENGAGE Interaction Analytics can also be leveraged to help with coaching and training employees and improving customer satisfaction overall.

Evaluator, another AI-powered tool for ENGAGE, utilizes sentiment analysis to monitor the performance of frontline agents and helps supervisors to easily identify those agents requiring additional training or coaching, allowing them to act instantly on specific conversations as needed. The tool also allows supervisors to provide constructive feedback to agents and for agents to respond to this feedback within the application, as a way to build employee skills and improve customer service levels and retention rates.

The benefits of AI can extend to every area of your business, through an effective keyword tagging strategy. For example, a customer service manager could stay informed of any conversations containing keywords like “cancel” or “unhappy,” to see how frontline users are handling these difficult conversations. Sales and marketing could flag competitor names or review conversations that have been flagged for positive or negative sentiments to identify new product value propositions or customer pain points. Product development could tag for keywords like “broken” or “missing,” to identify opportunities for product improvements or new features.

ENGAGE: Real Benefits, The Right Solution

Salesforce quote

According to a recent research study conducted by Salesforce, 88% of customers indicate that the experience a company provides is as important as its product or services, and 94% indicate that a positive customer service experience makes them more likely to purchase again. These customer statistics are really not surprising, but definitely help to explain why the right AI solution for any Contact Center needs to offer the real benefits of insights, user experience, and process improvements – as the Gartner report mentioned earlier explains. ENGAGE Interaction Analytics and Evaluator AI are the right solution for tapping into the wealth of information that is currently hiding in your daily customer interactions – insights that will allow your Contact Center and business to continually improve, create positive customer experiences, and soar to new heights.

Ready to learn more about UNIVERGE BLUE ENGAGE?

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Put Your Airport Data to Work: See Patterns, Forecast Needs

Posted by Jason Van Sice on Posted in Analytics, Biometrics, Cloud, Customer Experience, Hospitality, Security

Each airline passenger follows a logical process through an airport, but it is unique. Travelers on the same flight will have a different path: some will check bags, some will grab a quick bite to eat, some will fly through security lines. Add the complexity of passengers dealing with canceled, rescheduled and connecting flights, and you will quickly see that consuming and processing the data collected at each point gets complicated.

However, it’s important to understand the data to see patterns and make decisions that can enable smoother operations and a more enjoyable experience. Data can be collected at each interaction throughout the airport, but the data is often seen in silos – not as a complete, comprehensive picture.

Relying only on seasoned employees to interpret and master the data alone is risky in today’s environment. Any turnover or absence in staff would affect the flow of vital information that can help decision makers adjust to everchanging needs and requirements in the airport environment.

Today, it’s important to be able to adjust staffing and services in real time because the customer experience at an airport is largely predicated on crowding and wait times. Especially in the age of social distancing, people have concerns around long lines and inefficient service. Trust in baggage handling is also a critical factor, as well as providing adequate amenities near gates.

KMD, an NEC Company has designed business intelligence software specifically for the needs of the air travel industry. For example, data analytics can be used to understand current processing times at a given security point, forecasting passenger traffic and determining the number of lanes that need to be open to keep wait times at an acceptable level. This is just one example of how data can be optimized to streamline airport operations.

In this whitepaper, KMD has outlined several airport-specific use cases to demonstrate how business intelligence and planning software can help ensure actionable data and its ability to improve operational performance.

To learn more about this software solution, checkout this three-page preview of this whitepaper to better understand the potential of KMD airport data analysis.

Be sure to visit www.necam.com/aviation to learn more about our aviation solutions.

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NEC Maintains Top Rank in 2022 NIST FRVT Report

Posted by Kathleen Kiernan on Posted in Analytics, Biometrics, Cloud, Events, Government, Law Enforcement, Security Tagged , , , , , , , , , ,

NIST Ranked #1 Globally

  • #1 in Mugshot Identification
  • #1 in Border Security Identification
  • #1 in Mugshot Identification over age differences

At NEC Corporation, we take great pride in our legacy of creating the best technology in our field and our biometric authentication algorithms are no exception. Our #1-ranked National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) algorithms are trusted every day to provide accurate and secure results across sectors including commercial aviation, hospitality and the United States government.

Adding to this legacy, we are excited to share that NEC’s facial recognition algorithm earned the top ranking from NIST’s most recent Face Recognition Vendor Test across multiple categories.

NEC earned top recognition in the categories of Mugshot Identification both globally and in the United States, Global Border Security Identification, and Global Mugshot Identification over age differences, as well as Mugshot to Webcam Identification here in the U.S.

These rankings match the very real, positive impact our technology has on society every day. For example, U.S. CBP Deputy Commissioner, Troy Miller, recently shared in an interview1 that facial recognition technology, including our algorithm, has identified more than 1,000 imposters attempting to enter the country with false documents since 2018 – decreasing potential crime and creating safer communities.

For more than two decades, NEC has consistently surpassed competitors’ algorithms in the categories of accuracy and speed. This remains true even when demographic differentials including race and sex are accounted for and when subjects wear protective face masks. Our algorithm passed internal tests with a rate of over 99.9% in 1:1 verification when face masks of various colors and patterns were worn by individuals – ensuring security and supporting public health.

The latest NIST results showed NEC’s algorithm outperformed the entire field of 329 entries submitted from all over the world on mugshot identification. Our NEC-005 algorithm demonstrated a False Negative Identification Rate (FNIR) of just 0.0017 at a False Positive Rate (FPIR) of 0.001, respectively.

This same algorithm outperformed a field of 289 entries on Mugshot to Webcam identification with an FNIR of .0120 at a FPIR of .001.

NEC’s facial recognition algorithm is called upon by professionals across a diverse range of use cases in critical moments and is counted on for its reliable and accurate results. These use cases include criminal investigation, immigration, military security and national identification within the entertainment industry.

We have implemented more than 1,000 systems with our top-ranked fingerprint and face recognition technologies in more than 70 countries and regions around the world.

Our team works to create the most accurate and reliable product possible to ensure safe, accessible and enjoyable experiences for every person who uses our technology. While navigating access points can often be a hassle, we see a touchless and frictionless future made possible through our first-ranked biometric authentication algorithm.

To read more, you can access the full NIST report, here.

Learn more about our #1 ranked algorithm’s use cases here.

1. https://about.bgov.com/news/facial-scans-catch-impostors-at-border-as-agencies-embrace-use/

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NEC National Security Systems Showcases Digital Identity Solutions

Posted by Kathleen Kiernan on Posted in Analytics, Biometrics, Cloud, Events, Government, Law Enforcement, Security Tagged , , , , , , , , , ,

NEC National Security Systems (NEC NSS) showcased its robust, cloud-native digital management platform, body worn solutions and iris recognition capabilities at the connect:ID 2021 conference, October 5-6 in Washington, D.C.

Enlightening Speeches & Future-Focused Conversations

NEC speakers presented and participated in illuminating interviews and discussions during connect:ID, including company leaders: Dr. Kathleen Kiernan, the newly appointed president of NEC NSS; Raffie Beroukhim, SVP and Chief Experience Officer and NEC NSS board member; and Kris Ranganath, Chief Technology Officer.

  • Dr. Kiernan delivered an opening keynote focusing on “Putting a Face on the Digital ID Generation.”
  • Ranganath presented “Decentralized Identity” during a summit speech regarding the benefits of decentralized identity management solutions.
  • As a board member of the International Biometric Identity Association (IBIA), Raffie participated in a panel discussion on key topics in advanced recognition for government agencies.

In addition, Allen Ganz, Vice President of Customer Experience, was interviewed on the topic of “The Future of Digital Travel.” Ganz, who has implemented biometric solutions in the aviation industry, shared information about the first curb-to-gate system for a commercial airline in the United States, which was unveiled at Atlanta’s Terminal F in 2019.

Authentication & Digital Identity Solutions

At the conference NEC NSS hosted a prominent booth showcasing their digital identity management and body worn solutions, that provide identity intelligence, by combining NEC’s best of breed matching algorithms with cutting edge wearable cameras.

They also displayed NEC Digital Platform, a highly secure and scalable digital identity management platform that effortlessly brings touchless experiences to countless use cases. The platform provides a unified experience for a variety of services and transactions by using a unique, multi-factor Digital ID based on biometric authentication and AI technology. It streamlines both physical and digital identities into a secure, privacy-driven ecosystem for a seamless, secure, more personalized, and intuitive customer experience.

Also featured was the new iris-face combo kiosk that seamlessly matches a user’s iris or face—or both modalities simultaneously—against an existing document. Using NEC’s proprietary eye detection technology and remote gaze detection, this solution provides biometric authentication under a variety of conditions.

To learn how NEC NSS provides vital biometric, AI and computer support to U.S. government agencies, please visit the website. You can also follow NEC NSS on Twitter at @NECNSSFed and on its LinkedIn page.

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