14 September, 2023, PRESTON, Va — The identity verification industry has evolved significantly in recent years, expanding its scope beyond traditional Know Your Customer (KYC) processes. As IDV is becoming the new norm, more identity verification providers are vying for the attention of potential customers.
While the market is becoming a buyer’s market, it can also be confusing because of the many seemingly similar offers. As Gartner notes, “It is challenging for end-user organizations to select a vendor in a crowded market. Many tend to simply select vendors with experience and presence in their country or region.” However, it’s more important than ever before to have comprehensive selection criteria when choosing a solution.
The two pillars of identity verification: Document authenticity and liveness check
In the era of digital nomadism, it’s an advantage for a vendor to have global coverage of supported IDs. Not only is it a plus for user experience, but it also provides qualitative attributes for effective fraud prevention.
Also, remote interactions are paramount in most scenarios. A proper solution should offer an extensive set of document verification checks, from automatic document type recognition to NFC-based verification (the most trustworthy method). Concerning the latter, an effective solution should allow re-verification of electronic chips by processing results on a server, thus eliminating the risk of accepting a tampered ID.
As for binding the ID to the actual individual, it may already be not enough to ask users to take selfies (passive liveness check). Organizations need to be able to detect various biometric fraud, including injection attacks, and be able to compare live biometrics with the photo on the document and the data encoded in the chip embedded in the ID.
All in all, it’s crucial for a vendor to deliver a complete verification solution that tackles everything mentioned above. These key tasks are covered by Regula’s products acknowledged in the report—Regula Document Reader SDK and Regula Face SDK. Together, they form a solid future-proof foundation for reliable identity verification.
Beyond the basics
Given the evolving landscape of security challenges and the growing demand for comprehensive solutions, organizations are looking for tools that can offer more than just the basics. Vendors are expected to stand out by adding more value through augmenting core capabilities with novel implementation approaches and the ability to handle AI-enabled attack vectors.
According to Regula’s latest survey, in the past year, 37% of organizations encountered incidents of deepfake voice fraud, while 29% fell victim to deepfake videos. The increasing accessibility of artificial intelligence technology for crafting deepfakes is amplifying these risks, posing a significant challenge for both businesses and individuals.
Regula has taken a proactive approach to fortifying defenses against this threat by investing in a forward-looking roadmap. "When it comes to detecting deepfakes, we believe that neural networks can be valuable for defensive purposes, as long as they come with other anti-fraud measures that focus on physical and dynamic parameters,” says Henry Patishman, VP of Identity Verification Solutions at Regula. “These include face liveness checks, document liveness checks, optically variable security elements, and more. It's still challenging to create deepfakes that show the expected dynamic behavior. Verifying the liveness of an object can provide a crucial advantage against fraudsters. Additionally, cross-referencing user information with biometric checks and recent transaction history can enhance the verification process."
*Gartner, Market Guide for Identity Verification, Akif Khan, 7 September 2023
