Overlayed on the principal trend in the industry of the transition from physical to digital, three key summary conclusions can be drawn from the monthly headline stories of ID & Secure Document News™ (IDN).

Whether it’s airport security checks or facial recognition on smartphones, biometric identification solutions are an integral part of our everyday lives, and the next generation is ready and waiting. DNA-based processes not only enable the accurate identification of citizens, but also raise data protection to a new level.

The US National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) has released its ‘Face Analysis Technology Evaluation (FATE) Part 11 report’ on the assessment of face image quality vectors, a critical facet in advancing face biometrics technology.

Regula Forensics has unveiled the spectrometer-microscope Regula 5006, a two-in-one device tailored for advanced forensic scrutiny of identity and other secure documents.

The 2023 High Security Printing™ (HSP) Asia conference took place in Colombo, Sri Lanka, from 4-6 December, following a four-year break as a result of the pandemic.

HID, recognised as a leader in trusted identity solutions, has recently secured a contract to supply Finland with an advanced high-security driving licence card and personalised services solution.

In March 2023, ID & Secure Document News™ (IDN) carried an article on the opportunities for new projects stemming from research collaborations, using the UK SPRITE+ network as an example.

On 1 December, the Argentine Republic issued a new national electronic identity document. The document is in compliance with international standards, as outlined by the International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO). Here is a summary of the key features of the newly issued document.

A brief review of the launch of Pakistan’s ePassport in August’s edition of ID & Secure Document News™ is followed up here with a more detailed examination of the new document.

The ID and secure document industry goes to great lengths to keep secure the personally identifiable information (PII) that we gather, as we are keenly aware of the injurious consequences of ID data breeches.

In his article ‘Emerging Fingerprint Technologies for Smartphones’ (see IDN January 2023), technology consultant Dr Alan Hodgson predicted that in response to the need for better fingerprint recognition on devices, technology suppliers would be looking to increase the size of their biometric sensors. And he was right!

Two of the most populous countries in South America have announced plans for harnessing blockchain based digital identity protocols to streamline and secure citizen access to public services.

The debate over how personally identifiable information (PII) is collected, used and stored digitally was brought into sharp focus during the worldwide response to COVID-19, with the widespread adoption of contact tracking and tracing.

The secure Hologram Image Register (HIR), established by the International Hologram Manufacturers Association (IHMA) to help safeguard hologram copyright and underpin the use of holograms in authentication and security printing, has been extended and relaunched as the Security Image Register (SIR).

In June of this year, the European Council provisionally agreed on rules to digitise the Schengen visa procedure (see sister publication Holography News™, October 2023). The council has now approved the digitisation of the visa process, signalling a further move away from physical visa stickers.

Sri Lanka’s Ministry of Public Security has called for international competitive bidding for the procurement of five million ePassports in keeping with the government’s initiative to introduce electronic chip-embedded digital passports to citizens.

The International Air Transport Association (IATA), in partnership with SICPA and other industry partners, has created an improved travel experience using digital identity, streamlining the process from booking a flight to border crossing at arrival.

In today’s fast-paced digital world, document authentication is undergoing a significant transformation. Traditional manual verification scenarios, for example at border controls, are complemented by automated processes and self- service kiosks.

As ID & Secure Document News™ celebrates its 10th year in print, I took a moment to delve into the archive and re-read the newsletter’s first editorial in September 2013. This gave, as the newsletter’s raison d’être, the increased societal and commercial interest in secure identity, principally driven by ‘terrorism, technology, illegal immigration and global criminality’.

So far this year, I have interviewed two of Veridos’ senior management team for ID & Secure Document News™ – CEO, Marc-Julian Siewert and CFO, Dr Christian Thywissen. Both executives stressed the identity solutions company’s goal to be completely CO2 – neutral by 2040.

The increasing demand for business and leisure travel emerging from the pandemic has changed air travel practices in the last few years and promised passengers a quick, secure and seamless experience.

Scytl, a leader in online voting and electoral modernisation, has won a contract to facilitate online voting in the national elections to the Federal National Council of the United Arab Emirates (UAE).

Reconnaissance International is pleased to announce the release of its new publication – ‘Smartphones for Authentication’ – the only publication of its kind.

The programme has now been published for The Holography Conference Online (THCO) 2023, taking place 21-22 November.

The Nordic and Baltic Ministers of Digitalisation have announced an effort to ensure that member countries’ residents will be able to use their digital IDs across borders.

IDEMIA, the identity technologies and biometric solutions provider, has been selected by the airport operator, GMR Group, to implement Digi Yatra’s facial recognition technology-powered boarding system at India’s Delhi, Hyderabad, and Goa airports.

Greece's new identity card is being issued from 25 September. The Ministry for Public Protection has published a statement outlining that under EU Regulation 2019/1157, member states need to issue new identity cards with upgraded security features.

High Security Printing™ Asia is, this year, being held in Sri Lanka’s wonderful capital city, Colombo (4-6 December).

In March 2023 IDN carried an article on the opportunities for new projects that stem from research collaborations, using the UK SPRITE+ network as an example.

In my opinion, the meaning of ‘trust’ lies in the expectation that something will happen or work in a certain way. This is at the root of the arguments laid out in this article.

The Finnish Border Guard has announced that all Finnish nationals on Finnair flights to and from the UK will be able to test a voluntary new digital travel document – Digital Travel Credentials (DTC).

The Identity Day (ID Day) Campaign seeks worldwide recognition of 16 September as Identity Day to highlight the importance of having proof of identity.

A lot has happened in India since the introduction of the Aadhaar unique ID number for its citizens under the Aadhaar Act of 2016. In this article we round up recent activity in what is considered to be the most populated digital identity platform in the world.

Since winning the contract to manufacture the entire Australian passport in 2002, the R-Series is now the fifth series that Note Printing Australia (NPA) has developed for the Australian Passports Office..

The 2022 Belize ePassport series, the first ever from a from a Caribbean Community (CARICOM) country to be nominated for an HSP Regional Passport of the Year award, represents one of the most modern and secure travel documents within the Caribbean region.

Optical & Digital Document Security (ODDS) 2022 (Vienna) and 2023 (Prague) have shown the importance of this conference in bringing together the secured document community and the digital identity and transactions community.

In a growing trend of soft-launching Mobile Driving Licences (MDLs) prior to general public release, two US states are currently trialling their state identity documents with select groups of businesses.

Earlier this month, Prime Minister Brigadier (retired) Mark Phillips presented the Digital Identity Card Bill to the Guyana National Assembly in an endeavour to consolidate the biometric data of each citizen into one card.

Pakistan has launched its first-ever ePassport, with a microchip embedded in the cover and modern security features integrated throughout its pages which meet ICAO standards.

The city of New Delhi witnessed a pivotal conference attracting international experts and industry leaders to delve into the transformative potential of Digital Public Infrastructures (DPIs) in the realm of identity.

US, UK, Japanese, Australian and other travellers to Europe will need a visa-waiver to visit most EU countries from 2024, including Spain, France and Portugal.

ASSA ABLOY intends, through its subsidiary HID Global SAS, to purchase approximately 98.5% of the shares of Evolis, a Euronext Growth company listed in Paris and a leading French manufacturer of ID card printers and consumables.

Using an app developed by Veridos, travellers can now transfer personally identifiable data via NFC (near field communication) from their ePassport to their smartphones, making pre-travel administration easier.

This year, Identity Week Europe moved its base from its traditional home of the ExCel Centre in London to RAI in Amsterdam. In addition to over 200 exhibitors, 3,000 attendees and 71 start-ups from 93 countries there was a full programme of conference presentations.

One of the issues that was discussed at the recent Optical and Digital Document Security (ODDS) conference in Prague was the future of personal identity.

In this commentary piece, government ID procurement processes come under scrutiny, and we question whether the lowest price solution is always the best value for money?

The US Supreme Court has limited the reach of the federal Identity Theft Penalty Enhancement Act, rebuffing the Biden administration’s efforts to prosecute a man already convicted of Medicaid fraud with a separate charge of aggravated identity theft arising out of the same fraud case.

In 2021, as Costa Rica reached the 200-year anniversary of independence from Spain and at a time when countries around the world were struggling with the effects of COVID, the country took the bold move to upgrade its travel document from machine-readable to a fully compliant biometric passport.

The Kurdistan Region of Iraq’s new ePassport was issued on 16 July at a ceremony in the regional capital of Erbil.

Learning from the COVID-19 pandemic response, the World Health Organisation (WHO) has recognised that there is a gap and continued need for a health status passport.

According to a recent article in Extreme Tech, the US Transportation Security Administration (TSA) has ramped up its biometric identity verification pilot by installing facial recognition systems in more airports.

The EU Digital Identity Wallet (EUDI) is to be made available free of charge to all 450 million citizens of the European Union (EU) in the form of a personal digital wallet stored on their mobile phone, the European Parliament and the Council of the EU have agreed.

One new document issue to report on this month, the US state of Wisconsin new driving licence and ID card.

South Africa’s Department of Transport (DoT) announced that the country’s only driving licence card personalisation machine is back up and running after breaking down last month.

Multinational technology company, Vision-Box, has deployed its Seamless Journey Platform in the new terminal at Ezeiza, Argentina’s largest international airport by passenger numbers.

While the tech giant, Apple, is essentially a consumer electronics firm that produces stylish smartphones, laptops, desktops and TVs, it is also a big user of biometrics to verify the identity of the user. Even more than that, it has never shied away from following other research areas that involve identity as a service.

The Togolese Agency for Identification, ANID-TOGO, has partnered with Atos and IDEMIA to build a national biometric eID system based on the Modular Open Source Identity Platform (MOSIP).

The transition in the ID and secure document industry from physical to digital authentication is just one example in a wider movement across many sectors to strike a balance between convenience and security in identity verification.

The Oregon Driver and Motor Vehicles Division (DMV) of the Oregon Department of Transportation (ODOT) recently confirmed that an estimated 3.5 million driving licences and ID cards were compromised when the agency was hacked.

Nassau, the Bahamas was the spectacular setting for the 10th High Security Printing™ (HSP) Latin America conference, which welcomed over 240 delegates from 118 organisations and 38 countries, over half from Latin America and the Caribbean.

In this, the first major redesign of the country’s travel document for over two decades, the Casa da Moeda do Brasil has pulled out all the stops to make the new Brazilian passport a real showstopper!

The prestigious Regional ID Document of the Year Awards form part of the industry’s High Security Printing (HSP) Latin America conference.

The new Pakistan ePassport includes 29 new and modern security features. Here, we open the passport and take a look at some of them.

The inaugural Cash & Payments Sustainability Forum (organised by Reconnaissance International) created the ideal venue for cash, ID and other secure document manufacturers to showcase their efforts to put our industry on a more environmentally sustainable footing.

IN Groupe, global specialist in identities and digital services, has announced that it has signed an agreement with UK-based Portals, supplier of security features and paper, for the sale of Portals’ security components business in Bollate, Italy.

The Nigerian government is planning to authorise banks to issue debit cards that will double as National Identity Cards, following the failure of the National Identity Management Commission (NIMC) to issue the cards to applicants.

The ID and secure document industry is not known, for obvious reasons, for its willingness to share information. But a chance meeting at a Reconnaissance conference between a client and supplier is beginning to bear fruit.

South African company, Contactable, has announced its adoption of Regula’s ID verification technology to further combat identity fraud across the continent.

In this opinion piece, Lic Mónica Peralta (Forensic Document Expert) looks at the current state of physical document security printing and gives her thoughts on how it might be improved in the age of physical/digital co-existence.

A small article in the news section of March’s ID & Secure Document News noted that at the same time as European Union lawmakers are on track to ban the use of remote biometric surveillance for general law enforcement purposes, France had approved the deployment of artificial intelligence (AI) to monitor public spaces for suspicious behaviour during the 2024 Paris Olympics.

Reconnaissance International, publisher of ID & Secure Document News® and secretariat to the International Hologram Manufacturers Association (IHMA), has recently added two senior industry executives to help continue the work.

Taiwan may have to pay substantial compensation to a contractor after the country’s digital ID plan was halted due to privacy and cybersecurity concerns.

One new document issue to report on this month, the Canadian Passport.

From its earliest stages as a consultation on revisions to the eIDAS (Electronic Identification and Trust Services) regulations, ID & Secure Document News™ has followed the progress of the EU Digital Wallet.

A contract to provide the US State Department with passport electronics and software has been awarded to Thales and Infineon.

TECH5, which operates in the fields of biometrics and digital identity management, has joined the Secure Identity Alliance and become a member of the OSIA initiative for an open set of interfaces for identity management.

In this occasional series of interviews, we ask leading figures in the world of ID and secure documents their opinions on some of the pressing concerns facing the industry today.

The central government of India has directed all states to complete the process of allocating the Unique Land Parcel Identification Number (ULPIN) in all villages by the end of March 2024.

In this round up of recent new secure document issues, we record new card designs for the US states of Arizona and Virginia, and the new Swiss driving licence.

Almost a year to the day since the inaugural ODDS conference in Vienna, 172 delegates from 94 global organisations gathered in Prague to share recent technical developments in the fields of optical and digital document security.

Despite the developments in digital ID solutions, there is a continual need for physical documents. In protecting these, the omission of advanced security features can result in substandard documents that are easy for counterfeiters to simulate.

There are a number of networks and research groups that exist outside of our community that could bring value to our work. The aim of this article is to illustrate this with reference to a personal case study undertaken over the past nine months.

NSI Group, a pan-African company specialising in secured documents and electronic payment solutions, has announced plans to establish a base in Kenya. The move follows De La Rue’s decision to cease operations in Kenya by the end of March, leaving a gap in the market.

In this round up of recent new secure document issues, we record the new Australian R Series passport and the new Finnish passport and ID card.

HID, a leader in trusted identity solutions, has been awarded with a contract to supply Bahrain with an end-to-end ePassport solution.

The regional ID Document of the Year Awards were presented as part of the industry’s High Security Printing (HSP) EMEA conference on Yas Island, Abu Dhabi, with the awards presented at a special ceremony in the stunning grounds of the W Hotel on 8 March 2023.

The role of the Chief Financial Officer (CFO) in any large company is to provide financial stability to the organisation through leadership in financial planning, accounting, budgeting and reporting. But as this far-reaching profile of Dr Christian Thywissen, CFO of Veridos, shows, the role can take you into many other areas of business activity.

The US administration released a three-part proposal on 2 March asking Congress for $1.6 billion to help provide federal agencies and local governments with more funding to handle pandemic-related fraud claims, modernise identity verification systems, and support victims of identity theft.

Two British politicians have joined forces to promote the introduction of digital ID cards, which has been met with mixed reactions.

The programme for the second Optical and Digital Document Security™ (ODDS) conference is now available, demonstrating the importance of bringing together people involved in developing digital systems for identity and financial transactions with the more traditional security document community.

In the patent titled ‘System and method for multi-modal continuous biometric authentication for messenger and virtual assistants,’ the method described uses multiple biometrics in the background during chatbot communications to enhance security without complicating the user experience.

In this round up of recent new secure document issues, we record the new Swiss passport and ID card and the Slovak ID card.

The US Transportation Security Administration has awarded Dignari a biometric service contract, valued at $23.5 million, for credential and access management services.

Yiannis Theodorou and Debora Comparin warn of the pitfalls in creating closed and non-interoperable systems in this adaptation of their article ‘Modernising Digital-ID Systems: What Open Standards and Open-Source Software Really Mean’.

Definitive proof that fingerprints are a unique biometric at birth has been published by a team of academic researchers in the journal Cell. But while the paper seems to confirm that they are unique – are fingerprints immutable and reliable?

Identity solutions provider, Veridos, has announced it has entered into a strategic partnership with biometrics expert Innovatrics and its leading ABIS database, taking Veridos’ holistic VeriDNA solution for civilian use of DNA IDs to the next level.

The boss of the UK’s Border Force has said that advances in biometrics and data security will soon make physical passports redundant.

At a time when automated document checks and ID-proofing processes are becoming more and more widespread, the physical credential remains extremely important in securely establishing and underpinning a person’s identity.

German researchers who purchased biometric capture devices on eBay have reported that they discovered sensitive US military data stored on their memory cards.

Indonesia is set to receive $250 million in funding from the World Bank Group’s International Bank for Reconstruction and Development to strengthen the country’s civil registration.

Toward the end of 2022, South Africa’s Transport Minister Fikile Mbalula announced that the current driving licence card would be phased out and replaced with a card compatible with international standards. Now, more details about the new card are emerging.

In the November 2022 edition of this publication, an article examined two use cases of fingerprint readers – smartphones and payment cards.

PopID’s biometric solution PopPay will be integrated into Toshiba Global Commerce Solutions’ Elera Commerce Platform, enabling the use of artificial intelligence (AI)-based facial recognition software that authenticates consumers’ identities.

Document and biometric verification company, Regula, has recently helped Ecuador to update its national forensic capabilities and has had its devices recognised in two Gartner reports.

Without question, the most significant recent event that impacted everyone around the world was the COVID-19 pandemic. Literally overnight, the way we worked, interacted, transacted, and proved our identities changed.

Holidaymakers travelling to Europe this summer will be spared the anticipated longer queues at European borders, after the EU announced a delay to the rollout of the Entry/Exit System (EES).

Registration for the second Optical and Digital Document Security™ conference is now open, with a programme that demonstrates the importance of this event in bringing together people involved in developing digital systems for identity and financial transactions with the more traditional security document community.

Mobile identification has been gaining steam and COVID-19 has served to further heighten the need for contactless proof of identity.

The Arizona Department of Transportation, Motor Vehicle Division, has awarded Thales a three-year contract to upgrade the security features and redesign the appearance of Arizona’s driving licences and ID cards.

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 global provider of integrated identity solutions, is set to unveil a new range of security features specifically aimed at protecting the transparent window areas on ID documents, namely Amber ID, Diamond ID and Spectre ID.

The issue of biometric authentication of identity is a topic that has a rightful place in this newsletter. There are many aspects to this debate and last month the topics of fingerprint readers and ‘Security vs Convenience’ were explored.

A review of this year's headlines.

The UK ID data regulator, the Information Commissioner’s Office, has released a statement warning organisations to assess the public risks of using emotion analysis technologies for ID.

In a very personal account, Lic. Mónica Peralta (Forensic Document Expert) sets out her opinion of what is in store for the ID and Secure Document industry in 2023.

Infineon Technologies, the German Federal Printing Office and the Fraunhofer AISEC gave a demonstration at Trustech of an electronic passport that meets the security requirements of the quantum computing era.