By Joachim Caillosse - Chair of the SIA Document Security Working Group, Frank Smith, Advisory Observer to the SIA and Thomas Poreaux - Member of the SIA Document Security Working Group. 

The use of false identities is a problem that goes far beyond the area of border control. Though fraudulent identification documents are commonly associated with issues like immigration, they can also be used to aid serious organised crime, terrorism, fraud, and a range of other threats. As a result, accurate verification of identity documents is now a major concern in additional contexts including areas such as financial services and digital retail.

'Authentication: Are You Who You Claim to Be?'is a new guide from the SIA that addresses the challenge of identity authentication. Discussing the inherent difficulty in validating someone’s identity, as well as some of the solutions that are currently available, the report also provides detailed use cases and recommendations for anyone who may be looking to improve their understanding of this critical practice.

“It is very useful and highly informative report providing answers to questions concerning the Optical Machine Authentication (OMA) and in turn highlighting its increasing role in document authentication. The report will help practitioners expand their understanding of benefits and challenges linked to the increased use of optical authentication technologies.”

Malik Alibegovic, INTERPOL CCSD

In this blog, we provide a summarised view of some of the key themes covered in the guide.