The traditional role of identification as a means to uniquely link a person to a document that bestows rights and privileges is being expanded to grant access to all types of government and commercial services.

Veridos, a leading provider of integrated identity solutions, announced the launch of its new VeriCHECK SelfKiosk and M600 document reader at this year’s Future Travel Experience Global.

The almost unlimited access to high-quality printing services, as well as to sophisticated graphics software, has increased the quality of document forgery in recent years to the point where it is becoming more difficult for border control officers to tell the difference between real and fake secure documents.

Behind the ‘will-he-won’t-he’ and the ‘can-he-can’t-he’ stories of Elon Musk’s attempts to acquire Twitter lurks another equally interesting tussle about identity, and how we assert and verify it when we are not physically present.

In what looks like a fairly hasty policy revision, the US Inland Revenue Service has modified its position that online tax filers would be required to submit a selfie to a third-party identity verification company in order to access their accounts.

Each year, the ID and secure document industry produces tens of millions of documents that require fast and reliable examination to confirm their authenticity.

London based cyber-security business, iProov, has published a guide providing an overview of how organisations across all industries can use biometric authentication to maximise their potential return on investment.

The new visible digital seals (VDS), originally adopted by countries for travel document verification, are now gaining wider international acceptance as affordable and efficient solutions to the global challenge of providing travellers with an internationally verifiable proof of health.

As with any change in the market environment, there will be sectors that will decline but also areas of opportunity. The seismic changes resulting from the COVID pandemic have resulted in both immediate and long-term changes across most if not all market sectors.

Like them or loathe them, mutually recognised standards are the cornerstone of international trade. The recent release of a new ISO standard for product and document authentication (ISO 22383:2020) adds to a library of ISO standards that are reviewed in this edition of ID & Secure Document News™ and June’s edition of its sister publication, Authentication News®.