The emergence of innovative fintech is rapidly changing the global financial industry, enabling consumers to enjoy a more convenient life. Recognizing the identity verification challenges arising from these new financial services, Gateway Information, founded in 2013, launched its self-developed two-factor interactive identity authentication mechanism in 2014. This mechanism allows financial institutions to proactively send push notifications to verify user identities and ensure transaction security. This service earned the company recognition in 2014 as one of the world's eight fintech innovation stars, jointly selected by Accenture and 14 major international financial institutions.
Recognizing the booming application of AI technology, Gete Information launched its facial recognition product in 2018. Combined with existing identity verification mechanisms, it enables facial image recognition in apps, ATMs, and surveillance equipment, meeting the eKYC needs of the financial industry. To gain the trust of the financial sector, the company joined Japan's Toppan Group in 2020. With the assistance of resources from the Japanese headquarters, they leveraged TWS (Taiwan Smart Cloud) to introduce the TWCC Taiwan AI Cloud Platform service from the National Center for Information Industry (NCI) of the National Applied Research Laboratories (NARL). This ultimately led to the iDenFace facial recognition solution successfully passing NIST (National Institute of Standards and Technology) testing in September 2021.
Hu Yaoren, Chief Technology Officer of Gateway Information, said that although the application of biometrics is currently limited by Taiwan's financial regulations, video authentication is a global trend, so the company had to prepare in advance, which led to the idea of applying for NIST testing in the United States. However, to pass this test, the AI model in the iDenFace facial recognition solution had to be further optimized, with an initial estimate of about 60,000 GPU hours required. Among the many public cloud providers on the market, we decided to introduce the National Center for Information Technology's AI cloud service, successfully completing this seemingly impossible task within three months.
Gateway Information's iDenFace facial recognition solution is entirely developed by a Taiwanese team, eliminating the financial industry's biggest concern about cybersecurity. In addition, the iDenKey identity authentication solution has obtained international standard FIDO (Fast Identity Online) alliance FIDO2 and FIDO UAF certifications, so it is highly regarded by the Taiwanese financial industry.
High efficiency and excellent service Looking forward to long-term cooperation
The NIST facial recognition technology benchmark tests the performance of facial recognition systems in public and private sectors and information security applications. The evaluation covers six scenarios and uses 12 million still images for testing. Gateway Information's iDenFace facial recognition solution performed well in the FRVT 1:1 Verification program, specifically in the MUGSHOT Photos 12+YRS test.With a TP3T resolution of 99.721, it achieved an outstanding ranking of 12th worldwide.This also means that the system is highly available.
Gateway, with its extensive experience in the AI field, understands that after defining the purpose of an AI project, it is necessary to repeatedly go through steps such as preparing data, training models, and evaluating models, which inevitably consumes a lot of R&D costs. Therefore, only by introducing suitable external AI computing resources can the cost of building and maintaining the AI environment be reduced, while accelerating the project's progress.
Hu Yaoren pointed out that, based on the AI team's suggestion, there were several reasons why they ultimately chose to partner with TWCC (Taiwan AI Cloud) and use the National Center for Information Technology's TWCC platform. First, TWCC provides physical CPU computing power, which is naturally higher than the virtual environments of other public cloud platforms, shortening overall computing time and reducing costs. Second, the AI computing environment has a high degree of integration, and TWCC provides localized professional technical support and faster processing speeds. Not only does it offer fast computing speeds and excellent technical support, but TWCC is also more affordable, naturally making it the best choice for Gateway Information. And the results of participating in the NIST testing prove that the company's initial decision was very correct.
After obtaining NIST testing certification, GateInfo will not only continue to cultivate the Taiwan market, but will also further expand into overseas markets, including Japan, Dubai, Europe and Southeast Asia. It also hopes to maintain cooperation with the National Network Center and Taiwan Cloud in the future to strengthen the company's competitiveness.
Source:National High-Speed Network and Computing Center, National Research Institute