Evolution of Identity Verification and Safest Authentication Techniques
In the digital age, a reliable identity verification method is essential for businesses to ensure security, compliance, and user experience. Here are the key characteristics of such solutions:
High Accuracy and Fraud Detection
Modern identity verification solutions accurately verify identity documents and biometric data, reaching at least 99% accuracy for document authenticity checks and verifying critical data fields at 100%. They also detect forgeries, adulterated IDs, and spoofing attempts.
Multiple Verification Techniques
These solutions combine various verification techniques, including government ID verification, biometric comparison, database cross-checking, and passive signals analysis. This approach helps confirm identity and detect fraud patterns.
Speed and User Experience
Ideally, these solutions provide near-instant verification results, ensuring that user onboarding or transactions are not disrupted. They also offer streamlined and intuitive processes for end users.
Security and Privacy Compliance
Personal data is processed securely, often on-device to minimize risk. Strong encryption, anonymization, minimal data retention, and compliance with strict data protection standards, such as ISO 27001, GDPR, and CCPA, are standard practices.
Interoperability and Standards-Based
These solutions support interoperable digital credentials, such as verifiable credentials and decentralized identifiers (DIDs), enabling secure, flexible, and privacy-respecting identity proofs that can be used across different platforms and services.
Resistance to Modern Threats
These solutions incorporate liveness checks and AI-assisted biometric analysis to detect fraud techniques such as deepfakes, ensuring that the person presenting identity is real and physically present.
Customizability Based on Risk and Regulations
Businesses can configure identity verification levels according to applicable regulation, customer expectations, risk tolerance, and the required assurance level.
Privacy-Respecting Solutions
Advanced methods like zero-knowledge proofs and cryptographic group signatures enable verifying specific attributes without revealing other personal information, enhancing privacy while maintaining reliability.
Document-Free Verification and Non-Doc Verification
Document-free verification and solutions like Sumsub's Non-Doc Verification, which uses non-document methods for verification, including ID number only and open banking, are being adopted to simplify onboarding for both companies and users. Sumsub's Non-Doc Verification solution is available to over 90% of users in several countries and is compliant with various regulations. It can also be customized to meet country-specific requirements.
The history of identity verification dates back to at least 100,000 years ago, with people using jewelry and other distinctive goods and markers of identity to verify one another. The Babylonian Empire was the first civilization to collect and record people's personal information. Over the centuries, methods for identity verification have evolved, from security questions introduced in the 1990s to automated biometric checks starting in the 2010s. The verification process is necessary to avoid illegal activity and remain in compliance with various regulations. King Henry V introduced the first version of the passport in 1414, and today, clients in the UK can submit a variety of documents for verification, including a valid passport, driving license, national identity card, firearms certificate or shotgun license, or identity card issued by the Electoral Office for Northern Ireland.
In the digital age, these cutting-edge identity verification solutions leverage technology and finance to ensure not only high accuracy, fraud detection, and security but also user convenience and privacy compliance. They amalgamate advanced techniques such as biometric comparison, database cross-checking, and AI-enabled liveness checks, making them resistant to modern threats like deepfakes. Additionally, these solutions offer customizable levels of verification based on varying risk, regulations, and user needs, showcasing their adaptability in the ever-evolving landscape of digital identity authentication.
