The Department of Homeland Security Science and Technology Directorate is inviting vendors with a solution to tackle identity theft and fraud to participate in a number of tech demonstrations in 2023.
The 2023 Remote Identity Validation Technology Demonstration will hopefully foreground solutions that can stop breaches in accounts and during the onboarding process when a user should be checked and authenticated. Security documents can also be duplicated, doctored or illegally manufactured with false information or passport images to allow a traveller to adopt a potentially dangerous new identity.
The technology demos will be spread out throughout 2023.
There is a higher percentage of new accounts being created and services that can be accessed without a company or government gateway system to warrant tests on newer technologies.
Arun Vemury, Lead of S&T’s Biometric and Identity Technology Center, explained that while a flurry of new tools have appeared on the market in recent years, which claim to authenticate documents and verify identity, there are “a wide range of questions about the performance and fairness of the technologies as well as concerns that bad actors could exploit weaknesses in the new process to commit fraud at scale”.
The performance of technologies will be tested against well-known and sophisticated types of attacks and evaluate fairness in commercial or government applications.
Vemury said: “In the past year, we’ve seen tremendous innovation from the identity and biometrics industry to adapt to new government and private sector identity needs”. “While we understand performance will vary among different technology providers, we need to develop measures to evaluate the performance and new risks associated with these capabilities.”
80 companies have so far registered their interest to join the demonstrations.
Solutions may fall in one of these categories:
- A product that validates identity (e-)documents .
- Innovative solutions to secure physical documents.
- e.g. IDEMIA’s LASINK technology, https://identityweek.net/idemias-lasink-security-features-for-identity-documents/
- A “liveness” selfie-taking application to estimate user’s age or enable face matching.
- Face recognition vendor, Yoti and Meta announced a UK-wide facial age verification rollout across the social media platform.
- Remote identity validation technologies, two-factor authentication.
- Turkey is introducing a blockchain digital identity to verify citizens during login to public services.
Application instructions will follow, however the deadline to submit an initial application in the ‘Document Validation’ Track is 15 February 2023, with the vendor selection process taking place on 15 March 2023. Read the updates at IdentityWeek.net.
The closing date to enter the ‘Match to Document’ Track is to be confirmed.
Interested companies can visit https://www.dhs.gov/science-and-technology/remote-identity-validation-technology-demonstration.
