Face recognition-powered entry for gates and staff doors — no fobs, no cards, no friction
We've taken the same AI and cloud-native technology behind our ANPR platform and extended it into pedestrian access control. The result: a face recognition system that manages who enters your building or gates — automatically, securely, and without a single card or fob in sight.
Whether you need to control an outdoor pedestrian gate, a staff entry door, or an entire building's access hierarchy, our platform handles it. Permissions can be managed from our dashboard directly, or driven automatically by your existing HR software via our API — so when someone joins or leaves your organisation, their access is provisioned or revoked instantly, with no manual IT intervention required.
From face to unlocked door in under one second
Person approaches the door or gate. An IP camera captures a high-quality frame of their face in real time.
AWS Rekognition checks for liveness (preventing photo attacks), then searches the enrolled face collection for a match with a confidence score.
The matched identity is checked against their permissions: is this door allowed? Is it within their schedule? Does their role grant access?
Door unlocks instantly. Every access event — granted or denied — is written to an immutable audit log with person ID, door, timestamp and confidence score.
Event Flow — Happy Path
Face recognition access control — cloud or on-premise — installed and running in weeks, not months
Three types of customers, one platform
Growing SMEs and multi-site businesses currently relying on keys, paper sign-in, or unmanaged fobs. One vendor, one contract — we handle everything.
Already running BambooHR, Sage, or similar. Want HR data to drive door access automatically — day one provisioning, instant revocation on exit.
Running Paxton, HID, or Salto — approaching end of contract, frustrated by fob admin costs, or locked out of modern integrations. Face recognition is the upgrade.
Same platform, same features — choose where your data lives
Our cloud model is the fastest path to deployment. We manage everything — the infrastructure, updates, monitoring, and backups. Your team just uses the dashboard and manages permissions. Biometric data is held in AWS London (eu-west-2) and never leaves the UK.
In some sectors, biometric data simply cannot leave your own infrastructure — regardless of where the cloud servers are located. Our on-premise model runs entirely within your network. No biometric data ever touches a third-party cloud. You are the sole data controller and processor.
Sectors that require on-premise:
Government NHS / Healthcare Financial Services Legal Defence UniversitiesEverything you need to manage who goes where — and when
Industry-leading face recognition via AWS Rekognition. No custom AI engine to build or maintain — we leverage managed infrastructure for 99.5%+ accuracy with built-in liveness detection to prevent photo and screen-based spoofing.
Assign roles to people, not doors. A "Finance Manager" role automatically grants the right doors — main entrance, finance floor, meeting rooms. Add a new employee to a role and they have full access from day one.
Configure access windows per person, role, or door. A valid face match outside permitted hours is automatically denied and logged. Visitor day passes, contractor access windows, and out-of-hours restrictions all managed in one place.
Connect BambooHR, Sage, or any HR platform via our REST API. New employees get access provisioned on their start date. When HR processes a leaver, their face is removed from every door instantly — no IT ticket required.
Every access event — granted, denied, emergency unlock, or out-of-hours attempt — is logged with person ID, door, timestamp, and confidence score. Exportable for compliance reporting, insurance, or SIEM integration.
Door controllers maintain an encrypted local cache of permitted face vectors. If internet connectivity drops, access continues for known faces — with events queued and synced when connectivity is restored. Your building never locks out your staff.
We've thought through every failure scenario — not just the happy path
Every door has a configurable fail behaviour set at installation time — fail-safe (lock releases, door opens) for life-safety doors, or fail-secure (lock holds) for high-security areas. A small UPS on each door controller bridges short outages without changing behaviour at all.
Door controllers maintain an encrypted local cache of permitted face vectors — raw images are never stored locally, only compact face templates. If the internet goes down, your staff still get in.
Fire alarm integration is hardwired — a dry contact input on each door controller wired directly to the building fire panel. It operates completely independently of network, cloud, and software. This is a legal requirement under UK fire safety regulations.
A lockdown is the deliberate, software-initiated locking of all or selected doors — the operational opposite of a fire alarm. Where a fire alarm releases doors for evacuation, a lockdown seals them to prevent movement during a security threat. During an active lockdown, face recognition does not fail — it is deliberately overridden. Even a confirmed face match will be denied if a lockdown is active.
Trigger methods:
Lockdown levels:
External doors lock — no new entries. People inside can still exit. Face recognition disabled on entry doors only.
All doors lock — entry and exit. No movement permitted. Fire alarm override remains active and legally cannot be disabled.
Specific zones, floors, or individual doors locked while others remain in normal operation. Isolate a threat area.
Fire alarm always wins. If a fire alarm triggers during an active lockdown, all fail-safe doors release immediately — regardless of lockdown state. This hierarchy is hardwired at the controller level and cannot be changed by any software configuration.
Fire alarm = unlock (hardwired). Lockdown = lock (software). One always overrides the other.
Every feature in our dashboard is available via a clean REST API — so your HR software, visitor management system, or internal tools can drive access control automatically.
From camera to unlocked door — the complete technical flow
A standard IP camera is a dumb device — it only streams video. It cannot call an API. We use a Hikvision smart face terminal which combines camera, onboard processor, and relay in a single wall-mounted unit. When it detects a face, it captures a JPEG and fires it directly to AWS API Gateway via HTTP POST — no separate edge device needed.
Full Event Flow
What Rekognition actually stores:
Face templates (mathematical vectors) only — not images. The door camera photo is never stored. Templates cannot be reverse-engineered into a photograph.
Your cloud platform cannot reach a door controller on a customer's private network directly. We solve this with one of two approaches depending on the installation:
Controller maintains a persistent outbound connection to AWS IoT Core. Platform publishes an unlock message to a door-specific topic — controller receives it instantly.
Platform calls a public HTTPS URL on the controller (or edge device). Customer needs port forwarding and a static IP or dynamic DNS service.
Controller asks your API for queued commands every 1–2 seconds. Simple but adds noticeable latency. No firewall changes needed.
| Step | Typical Time |
|---|---|
| Hikvision captures face | ~200ms |
| HTTP POST to API Gateway | ~50–100ms |
| Lambda (warm) + Rekognition | ~250–450ms |
| Permission check + unlock signal | ~100–200ms |
| Door controller triggers lock | ~50–100ms |
| Total (warm Lambda) | ~650ms – 1,050ms |
Sub-second response feels instant at the door — comparable to a fob or card reader. Lambda is kept warm via a scheduled CloudWatch ping every 5 minutes.
Face recognition data is classified as special category biometric data under UK GDPR (Article 9). We take this seriously. Both deployment models are built from the ground up to meet these obligations.
A single API call removes all biometric data — from Rekognition collections and all local door controller caches. Fully compliant with UK GDPR Article 17.
Cloud model: all biometric data held in AWS eu-west-2 (London). On-premise model: data never leaves your building. Both fully UK GDPR compliant.
Only compact face vectors (templates) are stored — not raw images. Templates cannot be reverse-engineered into photographs.
Every data access, deletion, permission change, and access event is logged. Full audit trail for DPIA compliance, ICO enquiries, and internal governance.
As biometric data is special category data, the following steps are mandatory before deploying any face recognition access control system:
We provide compliance documentation templates and can refer you to specialist legal advisors as part of our onboarding process.
Face recognition at the price of a card system — with the integrations a modern business actually needs
Based on a 10-door site with 100 staff. Includes hardware, install, software, credentials, and maintenance. Face recognition included where available.
We save ~£14,200 vs Salto KS with equivalent face recognition capability over 5 years.
On a 100-person site with 15% annual staff turnover, here's what competitors charge just for replacement credentials every year — before any other costs.
Adjust the sliders to see how much you'd save switching to our platform
Whether you're running Paxton, Salto, or a standalone biometric terminal — here's what you gain by moving to our platform.
Talk to us about switchingFace recognition access control — cloud or on-premise — installed and running in weeks, not months
Common questions about face recognition access control
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