Company spotlights have been created to give firms operating in the secure documents and identity industry an opportunity to discuss trends, product innovations and achievements.These interviews also offer readers insight into a company's outlook, history and future directions.Security Document World talks to OVD KinegramTell us a bit about your company and how it fits into the biometric and identity ecosystem?OVD KINEGRAM's path through the identity ecosystem has always been and still is focussed on security for governments. One question has always driven our innovation focus: How can a government verify in the most effective manner the authenticity of identity document, be it a passport, a resident permit or any other document and match it with the person, who is presenting it?We started our activity 30 years ago with physical security elements, which can be verified with the naked eye to provide evidence that an identity document is genuine.Today, of course we need to see identity documents from a different perspective. Firstly, identity documents today are no longer verified only by human eye, but they are enhanced with machine-readable components, such as the chip with biometric data. In the future, these documents may no longer need to be a physical token, depending on the method of inspection.As a provider of physical security features for both the human inspection and for the secure machine reading of information, we are well positioned to support the coexistence of the physical token and the emerging automated and/or digital verification processes. We believe that secure physical documents or, from a more general point of view, the use of secure physical tokens will be required by governments in the future to bridge the gap between the real world and the virtual world.What do you see as most important drivers and detractors for the industry and your company over the coming year?Security remains a growing concern worldwide, since we are all troubled by the negative events affecting our personal life. Satisfactory answers must be provided by politicians, who are now charged with the task of defining effective measures. Of course this provides the security industry in general and specifically OVD KINEGRAM as member of this industry ample opportunity to address these critical security problems from a technological point of view.Therefore, the driver for the coming years is clear. We need to make the world a more secure place to live in for all, but we must also be able implement additional security measures as conveniently as possible. Nobody wants to stand in line for hours – not even for several minutes – to be admitted to an area, where we know a priori that we are entitled to gain access.An important detractor arises from the fact that some of the security technologies have the potential to promote government surveillance of communications. This raises concerns that governments may fail to ensure that implemented procedures related to the use of biometrics and communications surveillance adhere to international human rights law.Our approach supports the coexistence of both the physical token and the digital verification process thereby alleviating, at least to some extent, the concerns over privacy – a major point that key stakeholders in the industry need to address when proposing a solution. What are some of the biggest challenges in producing innovations that help secure credentials and documents?The creation and use of secure physical tokens in a closed system, where we have one domain authority, such as the national car registration scheme, remains a manageable task. Such a system requires little or no cross-border interoperability and does not necessitate the international exchange of sensitive information such as encryption keys.The bigger challenge arises with the use of secure tokens when several independent domain authorities need to cooperate to enable each domain to verify the credentials issued by any other domain. A good example is certainly the ICAO efforts on travel documents or also the work that was undertaken to establish standards for the international driver's license.In a world where the mobility of people is essential to the economic success of a country, the ability to exchange data in order to verify credentials across borders continues to be an important point on every agenda. In reality we are facing additional challenges as globalization continues to push boundaries.The question is: How much globalization can a society or a country tolerate? Here it becomes evident that technological progress is not only defined by the availability of innovative technologies, but much more by the process in which the industry decides to implement it. At OVD KINEGRAM we are convinced that we can offer a satisfactory technological solution to secure ID credentials and other government-issued documents.Can you tell us something unique about your firm that not many people would know?OVD KINEGRAM is well known in the industry for its KINEGRAM® technology – an optical security feature providing outstanding visual effects, which are easily communicated, easily verified, but which are hard to copy or even simulate. This is enabled by using a proprietary origination technology, which is unique and not in the public domain.The technology is exclusively reserved for application on banknotes and government documents. Although we are more than 30 years in this business, only few know that we are a spin-off of Landis & Gyr who ran an activity here in Switzerland in the late 1970s focussing on machine-readable optical structures. Such structures have been used in pre-paid telephone cards. At that time the group became recognized as the largest producer of ID1 format cards. This was well before the creation of OVD KINEGRAM.Looking back, it is amusing to observe that we started off as a producer of machine-readable optical structures and then, to address the needs of travel documents, migrated our developments towards optical structures suitable for manual inspection. Now we see the trend back to the use of machine-readable devices as the use of automated border controls becomes more widespread. We feel comfortable with this as the integration of both functionalities – manual inspection and machine-verification – is really what we master.OVD KINEGRAM will be exhibiting at SDW 2016, 10-12 May, London, UK. SDW is a world-leading conference and exhibition event providing a global showcase for next-generation human identity solutions, focusing on intrinsic document security and on the new cutting-edge secure infrastructure now required to produce and use these advanced documents in live situations. http://www.sdw2016.com
Company Spotlight – OVD Kinegram
