Miami, FL—April 25, 2022—Force 5, Inc., an industry leader in automated enforcement for safety, security, and compliance in a power utility enterprise, announces the launch of its latest innovation for the Gatekeeper Platform—facial recognition technology. The addition of facial recognition significantly improves identity authentication of the employees, workers, and visitors entering a power utility’s facilities. Facial recognition is particularly strong in any location where processing physical entry must be self-service, such as unmanned facilities, which often comprise 70-90% of a large BES company’s fleet. The company will be launching the technology at the iP Utility Safety Conference, April 26-28, in Orlando, FL, in Booth 317.

Adding the facial recognition technology to the Force 5 Gatekeeper Platform gives customers the ability to rapidly—and with more accuracy—verify the identity of anyone entering any point of entry where Gatekeeper is installed. This includes corporate HQ, generation sites, unmanned facilities, outdoor call boxes, and PSPs. Facial recognition intake options also reduce a utility’s overhead for credentialing visitors and workers and validating their right of entry.

The Gatekeeper Platform is a powerful risk-reduction solution that drastically reduces the safety, security, and compliance risk that occurs when visitors, contractors, and employees enter a power utility’s facilities. Gatekeeper validates and enforces entry requirements against a BES facility’s watchlists, training requirements, restricted access verification, NERC/CIP visitor-entry and escort requisites, and health screening policies—any policy defined.

“We offer the largest group of identifiers on the market. The addition of facial recognition to our biometrics intake accessories strengthens the enforcement of our customers’ entry policies at every location across their company. Some customers are able to now automatically validate and enforce security and safety rules at unmanned sites for the first time,” said Force 5 Vice President James Evelyn.

Compared to manual entry logs and non-bio-identifier tools, facial recognition is a more reliable method of identification validation and enforcement. For example, off-the-shelf visitor management solutions typically include a pre-enrollment-generated QR code for the visitor or worker. This code can be easily passed to another person. Facial recognition eliminates this risk via a unique identifier validation.

Added to the Gatekeeper Platform suite of existing identifiers (badge, QR code, driver’s license, and fingerprint scanners), facial recognition empowers power utilities to rapidly process a high volume of personnel, such as during outages.

Facial recognition technology is the latest innovation being rolled out to all Gatekeeper Platform kiosk appliances, including mounted indoor kiosks, outdoor kiosks with climate protection, and mobile kiosk appliances.

About Force 5, Inc.

Force 5, Inc. is the industry leader in automated enforcement for safety, security, and compliance in a power utility enterprise. Force 5’s flagship product, Gatekeeper, is a turnkey hardware-software solution that automatically enforces any policy or requirement. The only solution explicitly engineered for CIP visitor-control requirements, Gatekeeper is built for power utilities with 100+ locations, and it drives real-time enforcement at every door and gate of a power utility. Gatekeeper’s robust architecture, industrial-grade hardware, and always-on support model aggressively pivot a power utility’s policy enforcement from passive to active, leading to a significant reduction in risk across the entire company.