TECHNOLOGY

Most official IDs have productivity and security devices built into them. A magstripe or bar code is an example of a productivity device, which typically encodes biographic details printed on the document. Using a magstripe, bar code, or combination reader, the biographic data can be quickly populated into an accompanying application. On passports and visas, the MRZ (machine-readable zone) serves a similar purpose. Comparison of the biographic data on the productivity devices with the printed information provides a minimal level of security that may be acceptable for some applications. Some additional security can be built into 2-dimensional bar codes by encrypting the information on them. Fluorescent ink that glows in UV light is an example of a security device — one that requires a considerable amount of sophistication to reproduce correctly. A digital watermark is another example.

 

Even today, the vast majority of people charged with inspecting identity documents, such as border and customs inspectors or bank officials, use manual forensic techniques to check security features that are incorporated in the document — such as the examination, using specialty optical equipment or computer-attached document readers, of the expected ultraviolet (UV) and near-infrared (NIR) properties, guilloche, optically variable device (OVD) presence, embossing, perforation, retroreflective laminate (3M Confirm) background patterns and overlay patterns (visible, UV, NIR).

AssureTec IS FOCUSED ON SOLVING THE WHOLE PROBLEM

A good automated ID authentication system should meet the following criteria:

— Universal ID authentication. Depending on the customer’s needs, be able to recognize and validate all possible IDs that could be used by ID holders. For example, a border control station might need to validate passports, visas, transit cards, driver’s licenses, green cards, and so on from various countries, whereas a liquor store located in the heartland may only need to validate driver’s licenses for a few states.
— It must be able to detect any type of fake ID using all possible integrity checks for the document type to ensure highest levels of confidence.
— It must be able to accommodate minute variations in legitimate IDs, to keep false rejects to a minimum.
— It must be fast — to enable speedy processing.
— It must strive to eliminate false accepts.
— It must be easy to use so that even untrained operators cannot compromise the integrity of the system.
— It must be easily and quickly update-able so that as new IDs come into play, the system will continue to work without work stoppage or an overhaul.

The notion of universality, i.e., the ability to perform a variety of different tests on a variety of different document types, is especially important. Different jurisdictions produce IDs with different security and productivity devices. A system that can read only smart cards, for example, will serve a singular purpose of validating IDs with those devices quite well; however, considering that smart cards are not universally used, you would need another system for validating IDs without smart cards. Another example is a system for checking digital watermarks, which are very sophisticated and hard-to-reproduce security devices. If you have a system that can validate the integrity of digital watermarks, it is clearly a secure system; however, it may not serve the purpose of universal ID authentication too well, as there are only a limited number of jurisdictions that use digital watermarks.

AssureTec’s system is unique because it can validate virtually any ID — it can recognize over 2,500 types IDs, and conduct a battery of tests for each ID incorporating all or almost all the security and productivity devices that the ID offers.

Shown above is a sampling of the kinds of authentication tests AssureTec may run on one document type. This list varies from document to document. On some documents, the number of tests may stop at 20, whereas for some other documents, the number of tests required to precisely authenticate a document might run close to 100 or more. Moreover, the list is not static. As minute variations in legitimate documents are discovered, AssureTec’s list of tests for those documents will typically increase.

AssureTec’s competitors typically employ a small subset of these tests. But their key failing is that they do not have nearly the same level of sophistication in their testing as AssureTec does. Simply comparing documents to a set of sample documents is inadequate due to the nuances involved.

To authenticate an ID, you first need to determine precisely what type of document you are examining. For example, just knowing that you’re looking at a U.S. passport is not sufficient. You need to know what series, what year and place of issue, possibly even issue date, etc., depending on the document. This is not only because the format of the document itself may differ from series to series, but also because there could be minute variations in the document depending on a variety of human factors such as place issued, place and time printed, wear-and-tear, etc. For example with U.S. driver’s licenses, there are many centers that issue IDs and, depending on when and where a driver’s license was issued, there could be minor and sometimes not-so-minor variations in document quality. In fact, in one U.S. state, which shall remain unnamed, all licenses issued over a 3-month period from a particular office were printed using an ink that did not have the appropriate near-infrared response. (AssureTec has at times caught these discrepancies and reported them back to the issuing authorities who have subsequently corrected the errors.)

A good ID authentication system should be able to detect all variations and account for them appropriately so that the percentage of false rejects is kept to a minimum while also not increasing the possibility of false accepts. AssureTec’s continually updated ID Authentication Library encodes a lot of such information, which is a key distinction when compared to the competition.

In summary, AssureTec’s patented technology is the best ID authentication money can buy. By automatically identifying IDs — whether they conform to ICAO (International Civil Aviation Organization) standards or not — and then automatically applying the right document-specific tests, AssureTec has eliminated the manual selection required by most other authentication solutions and speeded up the document inspection process. With the document type identified, AssureTec runs a theoretically unlimited number of tests on the document to determine authenticity; this capability is simply unmatched in the industry, and allows AssureTec to provide a high degree of discrimination that would be hard to beat even by trained human inspectors.