An authentication system includes a processor, a non-transitory computer readable medium, and one or more programs stored on the computer readable medium, where the processor, under control of the programs implements at least one neural network trained to produce first feature vectors from facial features extracted from a population of first facial images and, after training, configured to produce a second feature vector from facial features extracted from a second facial image, a discriminative classifier trained to identify closely matching ones of the first feature vectors and configured to identify whether at least one first feature vector and the second feature vector meet a correlation threshold. The authentication system may also include an access interface configured to allow access if the correlation threshold is met.