A review of last year's headlines.

Many technologies and features with their roots in commercial printing have made, and continue to make, a substantial contribution to secure document production. However, these technologies have for the most part been concerned with producing visual colours, perceived by the unaided eye as conventional colour printing.

The Hype Cycle™ is a well-established graphical tool used to represent the trigger, adoption, maturity and application of a specific technology and so characterise the complete life cycle of that technology’s adoption.

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

Registration is now open for the rescheduled Optical & Digital Document Security (ODDS) conference and seminar, which will be in Vienna, Austria, 11-13 April, with the programme available to view online at opticaldigitalsecurity.com.

It is inevitable that as we witness a move from physical to digital assertion of an identity to gain access to financial, retail and payment services we should see an attendant rise in the number and types of digital identity scams.

South African crypto-based money transfer fintech Xago has claimed a world-first in bringing neuromorphic computing to biometric verification and authentication. The mobile app uses neuromorphic computing technologies to simulate human cognition – how the brain naturally and instinctively recognises people.

The introduction to Reconnaissance International’s white paper ‘Vaccination Certificates and Immunity Passports – Health Status Proof’, stated that ‘standardisation and interoperability is inevitable to navigate the thousands of bilateral arrangements that are already emerging'.

IDEMIA has launched a new security feature, based on optically variable elements, that combines colour personalisation and DOVID technologies to secure secondary portraits.

According to reports on ‘threatpost’, ‘BleepingComputer’ and other online platforms, the private key used to sign EU Digital COVID certificates has been leaked and is being circulated on messaging apps and online data breach marketplaces.

The move to assert digital identities in instances when previously a person (or persons) would need to be present has undoubtedly brought convenience and speed to executing many legal, travel and governmental transactions.

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.

The International Organisation for Standardisation (ISO) has published ISO/IEC 18013-5 which, amongst other things, specifies the interface between the Mobile Driving Licence (mDL) and mDL reader and the interface between the mDL reader and the issuing authority infrastructure.

The Danish National Police, Rigspolitiet, has awarded IDEMIA with a ten-year contract plan to develop and maintain a new border management system for the external Schengen borders of Denmark due to the annual increase in visitors and the changed EU regulations.

Starting from 8 November, non-citizen, non-immigrant air travellers to the United States are required to be fully vaccinated and to provide proof of COVID-19 vaccination status prior to boarding an airplane, with only limited exceptions.

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 United States has issued its first passport with an ‘X’ gender marker, acknowledging the rights of people who do not identify as male or female, the State Department wrote in a recent press release.

The new design of the German eID card has given the card producer, the Federal State Security Printer of Germany, Bundesdruckerei (BDR), the opportunity to upgrade many familiar features to bring them in line with the latest technology and add some new high-security elements.

OVD Kinegram (OVDK), based in Zug, Switzerland and a subsidiary of the KURZ Group, specialises in the design, production and supply of the KINEGRAM® optical security feature for government documents and banknotes.

Global manufacturer of secure document printing and personalisation equipment, Mühlbauer, has added the IDENTIFIER 60 Plus to its established portfolio of passport personalisation machines.

Registration is now open for the new Optical & Digital Document Security™ (ODDS) conference, which will be in Vienna, Austria, 17-19 January 2022, with the programme available to view online at opticaldigitalsecurity.com.

The US Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has released its proposed cybersecurity rules including an attempt to prevent the serious problem of SIM swapping – a common form of digital identity theft that is particularly difficult to protect against.

Eftpos (electronic funds transfer at the point of sale) has become the first accredited non-government operator of a digital identity exchange under the Australian federal government's Trusted Digital Identity Framework (TDIF).

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.

A recent news item on BBC News has reported on the arrest of ten people, in London and Kent, on suspicion of supplying fraudulent passports to more than 100 high-level organised criminals.

Optical & Digital Document Security (ODDS) combines two successful conferences, Optical Document Security (ODS) with Digital Document Security (DDS). Reconnaissance International is now bringing them together into THE technical conference for physical, digital and virtual document security, which takes place in Vienna, Austria, 17-19 January 2022.

A morning of beautiful sunshine and clear blue skies in London heralded an equally unfamiliar sight of crowds of ID and secure document professionals assembling in the ExCeL centre for the start of Identity Week 2021 (22- 23 September).

A private-public partnership of technology and healthcare companies called the Vaccination Credential Initiative (VCI), which includes Microsoft, Salesforce, Oracle and the Mayo Clinic, has created a verifiable digital proof of vaccination called the SMART Health Card.

HID Global, a worldwide provider of trusted identity solutions, has announced the acquisition of Omni-ID, a manufacturer of RFID tags and industrial IoT hardware devices for passive and active tagging, tracking, monitoring and alerting applications.

Some Zimbabweans, including political party officials, are raising concerns following the award of a contract for the production of the country’s biometric passports to Belgian firm Semlex.

Ahead of the 6 November governorship election in Anambra State, Nigeria, the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) has declared that each voter has to enrol their identity in its Bimodal Voter Accreditation System (BVAS).

Following the recent redesign of the German national identity card, a mobile ID wallet app has been released and the digital proof of a driving licence issued.

French government agency Agence Nationale des Titres Sécurisés (ANTS) will be teaming up with IDEMIA to support the national digital identity program, called ‘France Identité Numérique’.

Australia’s new Births, Deaths and Marriages (BDM) Certificates have been launched nationally and are now available to the public. State governments around the country are promoting the new design – which was created by the Note Printing Australia (NPA) Design Team – with a particular focus on the increased security of the certificate to prevent identity fraud.

Land holders across the Lao People’s Democratic Republic (PDR), or Laos as it is more commonly known, including some of the most vulnerable households, are expected to benefit from improved land administration and titling thanks to a project approved by the World Bank.

Digital ministers from the G20 group of leading world economies met in Trieste, Italy, at the beginning of August to further discuss digitalisation as a key enabler for achieving the UN Sustainable Development Goals in its three economic, social and environmental dimensions, in line with the G20 priorities for 2021 of People, Planet and Prosperity.

Thales has announced a payment card to include an onboard fingerprint sensor, promising improved security and usability – and an end to contactless payment limits.

On 6 January 2021 a mob stormed the US Capitol carrying placards bearing the ‘Stop the Steal’ emblem, which supported the notion that widespread voter identity fraud had distorted the outcome of the 2020 Presidential election. At the heart of the claim were allegations of vote rigging by a variety of means – most of which required voters taking on false identities.

DATASONIC Group Bhd is reported to be in contention for the replacement contract for the Malaysian national identity card, otherwise known as MyKad.

The Ghana Health Service, in partnership with the vaccine alliance Gavi and Arm’s network of partners, engineers and developers, will begin a biometric-based national vaccination program in October 2021 using contactless technology from non-profit UK technology company Simprints.

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®.

Under national law, Argentinians have the right to identify themselves as gender neutral. But this has not been reflected in passports and National Documents of Identity (DNI), and residents have only been able to select ‘male’ or ‘female’.

The UK government has been accused of ‘constitutional ignorance’ after spending hundreds of thousands of pounds on contracts for a digital identity scheme before it had even launched a consultation into the project.

As of 1 July 2021, all European Union citizens and residents, as well as specific categories of travellers from third party countries, will be able to hold a COVID passport that will allow unrestricted travel throughout the Schengen Area on the grounds of health status. The scheme, in its current form, is set to run until 31 June 2022.