Privacy-Preserving Face Recognition With Multi-Edge Assistance for Intelligent Security Systems

Face recognition is one of the key technologies in intelligent security systems. Data privacy and identification efficiency have always been concerns about face recognition. Existing privacy-preserving protocols only focus on the training phase of face recognition. Since intelligent security systems mainly complete the calculation of large-scale face data in the identification phase, existing privacy-preserving protocols cannot be well applied to intelligent security systems. In this article, we propose the first privacy-preserving face recognition protocol for the calculations in the identification phase for intelligent security systems. We introduce the Householder matrix to blind user data including model data and face data, which enables the proposed protocol to support privacy-preserving face recognition on semi-trusted edge servers. Utilizing edge computing, fast response for large-scale face recognition can be achieved. The user can offload heavy calculations of matrix multiplication and Euclidean distances to edge servers simultaneously. The proposed protocol supports parallel computing based on multiple edge servers and thus enhances the efficiency of face recognition in intelligent security systems. Moreover, the recognition accuracy in the proposed protocol is the same as that in the original PCA-based face recognition algorithm. The security analysis demonstrates that the protocol protects the privacy of user data. The numerical analysis and simulation experiments are carried out to show the efficiency and feasibility of the proposed protocol.