Authors:
Adrian Rodriguez, Dave Steiner, Stacy Arrington, Susan Brosnan, Phillip Monkowski, Brad Johnson
Abstract:
This disclosure proposes a method to improve Security by using facial recognition with an awareness of where employees or other persons should or should not be at certain times.
Background:
Today most employees are given access rights that are based on their presence or the presence of access paraphernalia (key cards, etc.). This may work well most of the time, but could be very difficult to control with employees with changing work schedules. But this is even more problematic with sensitive areas that are not actually access protected. For instance, an employee may work behind a checkout counter or in the cash room during typical working hours, so other employees may be accustomed to seeing an employee in a particular place. But what if that employee isn't supposed to be there at that time -- perhaps they are pilfering from the cash drawer or trying to insert spyware onto a system.
Description:
The solution is to use facial or other video recognition to identify the employees and then map that onto the employee's work schedule, time card or other digital method of assigning an employee to an employee category or task for one or more shifts.
The Store would also segment the store into zones -- some zones may be sensitive and others may just be for certain employee categories due to skills (eg deli, bakery, stockroom). These zones can be assigned different Employee Categories and allowed activity.
Alternatively, that digital method to assign employees could have a configurable list of where that employee might be allowed during the shift or a segment of a shift (instead of using the employee categories).
For example, perhaps on Tuesday Employee A is a Manager and allowed into the Accounting Room, Deli, Registers, Customer Serice and Electronics Counter. On Friday, the Employee A is a Front-end cashier and can be behind any front-end register, but should not be in the Accounting Room, Electronics Point of Sale, deli counter, or Customer Service desk. At 7pm on Friday, the employee should have clocked out and is not allowed in any Zoned area or even allowed to log onto the Terminal with his/her User ID. The Employee could still shop for groceries in the typical aisle locations that all public is permitted to use.
This could also be used for vendors, who might be allowed in the stock room or other sensitive areas when they are noted as delivering product. But on a day when the vendor should not be visiting on professional business, that vendor would be flagged for being in the stock room.
The store can configure the behavior if a person is flagged as being in a disallowed place. In the preferred embodiment, the Manager would be sent an alert and any activity to protect the sensitive bits could occur -- the Server/Controller could automatically lock, the cash drawer could be configured to refuse to open, etc. Of course the Manager could also override the behavior, if the Manager recognizes that the behavior is normal, for instance Employee A was asked to stay later, but without a timecard change yet.
facial + shift = narrow lookup and acceptable MO values
TGCS Reference 1887
