BT/ Apple expands passkey play, gets patent for Touch ID on desktops
Biometrics biweekly vol. 67, 19th June — 3rd July
TL;DR
- Hardware owners with an Apple ID will be automatically assigned a passkey starting with version 17 of iOS and iPadOS and the Sonoma update of macOS
- Integrated Biometrics scanners now compliant with MOSIP Android specs
- Border protection in US debuts biometric app using FaceTec liveness
- NIST launches public working group on generative AI
- US facial recognition developers jockey for position in NIST accuracy testing
- BixeLab NIST certification for biometric testing extended
- Regula updates ID document scanning to detect image forgeries, snuff out ‘ghost’ images
- FIDO Alliance gets ITU approval for two specifications in passwordless authentication
- Daon granted patents for verification of government-issued IDs
- Smart Engines ID document scanning tech receives US patent
- Paravision takes the top spot in accuracy matching to NIST’s new high-angle dataset
- Okta adds Worldcoin authentication to the Auth0 marketplace
- New facial authentication module launched by Alcatraz AI for easy integration
- Sentry Enterprises adds biometrics to Allegion products for secure access
- Notarize launches Proof to bind digital signatures to ID with Persona biometrics
- Patent granted to ID R&D for a way to increase liveness detection speed and accuracy
- UIDAI refuses disclosure on liveness project as Indian police crackdown on cybercrime
- PixLab and FaceIO update privacy policy for face biometrics, age verification
- Zwipe cuts back on R&D and marketing in hopes of being profitable
- Tech5 claims victory in contactless fingerprint liveness competition
- IrisGuard biometrics to support Ethiopia’s G2C payments, financial inclusion
- FBI’s iris biometrics repository reaches 2.5 million with tech from Iris ID
- EU Digital Identity Wallet technical specifications out in the next weeks
- Trulioo claims huge increase in KYB adoption as US tightens ID verification requirements
- Sumsub launches deepfake detection tool, announces pivot to ‘full-cycle verification’
- Zwipe prepares for multiple biometric payment card rollouts in the Middle East
- Japan seeks Singapore’s experience in national digital ID rollout
- Birth registration efforts advance with funding support announcements for Cameroon, Tanzania
- Scotland plans improvements to digital identity service based on pilot
- Morocco will introduce digital IDs into health services
- National digital ID developments coming from Malaysia, Jordan, South Korea
- Bhutan’s digital ID bill scales through National Assembly amid accountability concerns
- Jamaica invests in biometrics to fight election fraud
- Philippines wants to add iris biometrics to tackle double voter registration
- Australia’s new digital ID strategy calls for more biometrics, stronger data protection
- Idemia reveals details on Lithuania’s biometric border system
- Ireland to introduce a bill on retrospective facial recognition use by police
- UK’s One Login plugs along. 8 services on board, 92 more hoped for soon
- WEF publishes report on decentralized ID, warns of biometrics risks
- CloudWalk joins $421M funding round for chipmaker amid potential AI pivot
- Socure adds document verification engine from Berbix in $70M acquisition
- A nice $14M seed for an AI company making model-monitoring software
- Generative speech firm ElevenLabs raises $19M, launches tool to snuff out deepfakes
- Passkeys advance with FIDO Alliance Guidelines, $3.5M for 0pass
- DHS S&T earmarks $1.7M to build W3C standards into digital wallets
- Access management firm NineID launches with a $1.2M round
- VC, Alphabet fund development of AML products
- Researchers defeat voice biometric security by targeting common liveness approaches
- Biometric industry events. And more!
Biometrics Market
The Biometric system market size is projected to grow from USD 36.6 billion in 2020 to USD 68.6 billion by 2025; it is estimated to grow at a CAGR of 13.4% during the forecast period. Increasing use of biometrics in consumer electronic devices for authentication and identification purposes, the growing need for surveillance and security with the heightened threat of terrorist attacks, and the surging adoption of biometric technology in automotive applications are the major factors propelling the growth of the biometric system market.
Biometric Research & Development
Latest Research:
Researchers defeat voice biometric security by targeting common liveness approaches
Shortcomings in voice presentation attack detection are making it surprisingly easy to defeat biometric defenses.
A pair of Canadian computer scientists trying to get around voice authentication found it easy to do so — claiming a success rate of up to 99 percent in only six attempts against the least effective biometric security system tested. The University of Waterloo researchers have published their findings in the IEEE Computer Society’s digital library.
“Our attack,” their report states, “targets common points of failure that all spoofing countermeasures share, making it real-time, model-agnostic, and completely blackbox.” There was no need to familiarize the algorithm with a target to create attack samples.
“The key message from our work is that (countermeasures) mistakenly learn to distinguish between spoofed and bona fide audio based on cues that are easily identifiable and forgeable.”
The researchers say that the effects of their attack are subtle enough to “guarantee” that their adversarial samples defeat auto speaker verification with their contents are intact.
According to reporting by the trade publication Tech Xplore, the samples were 10 percent successful in a four-second attack against Amazon’s Connect voice authentication software. They were 40 percent successful in a period shorter than 30 seconds.
Main News:
Apple expands passkey play, gets patent for Touch ID on desktops
Apple continues to play with its identity features in phones and desktops. Protection from data threats (and finding new overseas rocks to hide money under) is where it is at for Apple today.
MacRumors is reporting that hardware owners with an Apple ID will be automatically assigned a passkey starting with version 17 of iOS and iPadOS and the Sonoma update of macOS.
The addition means Face ID or Touch ID will be the way users log into their Apple ID account. There is a growing list of Apple proprietary services and accounts that require sign-in, and Apple’s move will make that process easier.
IT industry stalwart publication Computerworld, says Apple is after workplace business with this move. Specifically, Managed Apple IDs now will support syncing that is similar to what is enabled on mobile devices.
Also, it looks like executives noticed how desktop hardware has been forgotten when it comes to Face and Touch ID. They have been granted a U.S. patent for fingerprint biometrics on Macs, according to MacRumors.
In fact, the publication notes that this patent is based on original protection awarded in 2008 that showed biometric ID protection for Mac-like hardware. Recognition data listed were eyes, nose, mouth and chin.
In the new patent (11676373), Face ID is described as enabling access to email.
US facial recognition developers jockey for position in NIST accuracy testing
U.S. developers do not appear among the first seven algorithms of the leaderboard for the Face Recognition Vendor Test for verification posted by the U.S. National Institute of Standards and Technology on June 16. Only 2 appear among the top 20, overall.
A handful of vendors based in America show up among the leaders in face biometrics accuracy, however, in the NIST FRVT 1:1 Verification, and multiple startups have made impressive showings.
An algorithm submitted on May 10 by Omnigarde, a startup based in Southern California, is near the top of the third page out of 18 on the NIST leaderboard, scoring accuracy among the top 50 entries from all vendors worldwide in three different categories.
The “omnigarde-003” algorithm had a 16 percent lower error rate than Omnigarde’s previous entry, according to a company announcement.
Omnigarde says the memory required, feature vector size, feature extraction time, and matching time of its facial recognition are among the best of the most accurate algorithms analyzed by NIST.
An algorithm submitted at the beginning of 2023 by Atlanta, Georgia-based startup Armatura cracked the top 20 in the VisaBorder Yaw≥45 degrees and Border categories in the June 16 update.
The top overall result by a U.S. vendor is an algorithm from Paravision, which was found to have the best accuracy with the new VisaBorder Yaw≥45 degrees dataset.
Rank One Computing’s latest entry, submitted in late-2022, was among the 15 most-accurate algorithms matching three datasets. The previous submission from ROC also appears among the top 50 algorithms for overall accuracy among the more than 500 evaluated by NIST.
NIST launches public working group on generative AI
The U.S. National Institute of Standards and Technology is launching a public working group on generative AI, according to Secretary of Commerce Gina Raimondo. The move is a part of the Biden administration’s commitment to addressing opportunities and risks associated with AI.
The working group “will help provide essential guidance for those organizations that are developing, deploying and using generative AI, and who have a responsibility to ensure its trustworthiness,” says Raimondo in an announcement.
An article from The Hacker News uncovers risks associated with generative AI. It can be used for password-guessing and Captcha-cracking as well as strengthening malware and social-engineering attacks. ChatGPT can be used to personalize spear-phishing messages based on a company’s public messaging.
Moreover, executives and employees alike are drawn to the cost benefits and convenience of generative AI tools, sometimes without considering security risks.
A February 2023 survey of 1,000 executives found that 49 percent of respondents use ChatGPT now, and 30 percent intend to do so in the future. Ninety-nine percent of these ChatGPT users claimed that they’ve saved money with the tool.
Employees may also implement “shadow IT,” or download and integrate apps without approval from their IT department. For instance, an employee may connect an AI scheduling assistant to other accounts using OAuth tokens.
Once authorized, the tool will have consistent, API-based communication with a number of accounts without requiring additional authentication. Stealing this token would allow an attacker to access data from these connected accounts, opening the door to a number of attacks and leaks.
The working group is “especially timely considering the unprecedented speed, scale and potential impact of generative AI and its potential to revolutionize many industries and society more broadly,” says NIST director Laurie Locascio in the announcement. “We want to identify and develop tools to better understand and manage those risks.”
BixeLab NIST certification for biometric testing extended
BixeLab has announced that its accreditation for biometric testing by the National Voluntary Laboratory Accreditation Program (NVLAP) has been extended by another year.
In a LinkedIn post, BixeLab, which specializes in biometric and identity testing, certification and compliance for technical standards, says its NVLAP certificate of accreditation to ISO/IEC 17025:2017 is now valid until June 30, 2024.
“We would like to take this opportunity to thank all our of past and present clients for their trust and support,” the company wrote. “We are committed to providing professional and reliable biometric testing services and look forward to continuing to place a strong emphasis on accuracy and reliability in the future.”
The certificate notes that the accreditation “demonstrates technical competence for a defined scope and the operation of a laboratory quality management system.”
NVLAP is a program administered by the United States’ National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST). It provides third-party accreditation to testing and calibration laboratories in response to legislative actions or requests from government agencies or private-sector organizations, according to its website.
Regula updates ID document scanning to detect image forgeries, snuff out ‘ghost’ images
KYC provider Regula has announced newly updated software it claims will improve organizations’ ability to detect forged images within ID documents, by detecting secondary or “ghost” images.
A “ghost” image is similar to a watermark and contains hidden markers which can only be detected with certain technology, for example, a scanner at an airport.
The updated Regula Document Reader SDK software will automatically check for the presence, or absence, of all the portraits in a document, including primary, secondary, and these ghost images.
According to Regula, the majority of identity documents now have secondary or these “ghost” photos that may or may not be visible to the naked eye.
Such additional images are supposedly added to documents in RFID chips that are read with NFC technology, or in kinegrams or lenticular images, or which can only be visualized under special lights such as ultraviolet.
Lenticular images and kinegrams are optically variable images, which differ depending on how you look at them, similar to a novelty postcard for example.
An ID card could have pictures of the user in a customary position, for example, but then an additional image in a document not visible by normal means.
According to Regula’s own statistics, document fraud is a huge problem worldwide, and half — 49 percent — of organizations around the world had to deal with fake or modified physical identity documents in 2022.
India is one country that has publicly announced its use of ghost images, introducing them back in 2013, according to reporting by The Times of India, with the aim of cracking down on “rampant” passport fraud within the country.
Per the officials responsible, the new security images were much more difficult to forge.
In a case referenced in the interview, forgers would keep a passport in the freezer for roughly five minutes, then remove the cellophane paper and replace the photograph of the legitimate passport holder with that of the person planning to travel.
Support for these ghost images isn’t the only new feature that Regula is adding to its offering, the company also added verification for LASINK portrait printing technology, a type of laser engraving technology commonly used for printing pictures on important documents.
Though Regula admits that these type of advanced identity document checks work best when a physical document is present, the company claims the updated solution can still work in remote scenarios.
Regula Document Reader SDK apparently provides the capacity to verify the so-called “liveness” of a document during a session where a person moves their ID in front of a mobile or web camera to show that they have it as a hardcopy, not merely as a scanned image or a screenshot.
How Clearview developed its method for fast search on an above-billion scale database
Databases used in facial recognition are growing to a previously-unseen scale, which for Clearview AI created a need to develop a more efficient way to search them. Now, the company has moved to patent its new method for indexing vectors to enable database searches at scale.
‘Methods and Systems for Indexing Embedding Vectors Representing Disjoint Classes at Above-Billion Scale for Fast High-Recall Retrieval’ was filed under U.S. patent application number 18/214,782.
Clearview VP of Machine Learning and Research Terence Liu explained the implications of the innovation and its patent protection in an interview with Biometric Update ahead of time.
The company felt that after its work on algorithm training and presentation attack detection, “the development on that side was kind of taken care of,” Liu says, “and the challenge after that was, with this new algorithm, you convert all the faces in your database into embedding vectors, and these vectors have to be stored somewhere” to be searched.
As explained in a company blog post by Liu and expanded on in conversation with Biometric Update, Clearview believes the smarter way is to index vectors so only small portion needs to be searched. This means “you can effectively search only a small portion of the database, finding very highly likely matches,” Liu says.
Storing a massive database like Clearview’s in CPU memory is cost-prohibitive, but searching it in disc memory introduces latency (speed) and reduces throughput (volume of simultaneous users with the same response time).
“This challenge was less severe when we had, say, 3 million or 30 million, maybe 300 million images. As soon as we got to a larger database than 1 billion this became more of a research problem,” says Liu.
Fortunately, when training a neural network to recognize facial images, “to tell people apart and try to group faces of the same person very close together in this high-dimensional space,” the same embedding vectors are also effective for grouping similar faces. This is despite the fact that the process results in abstract number points, which do not pick out certain areas of the face for comparison.
“When you do a mathematical comparison, like a cosine similarity, similar faces will be grouped together, while different faces of different people will be separated,” Liu explains. He refers to these groups as “buckets.”
The result is that a “probe images’ embedding vector falls into a certain number of buckets that are very promising,” allowing the database search portion of the query to be limited to those buckets.
As described in the blog post, the new system adds “the assigner index” to the search process to identify the likely buckets for search. The patent application covers how the assigner index was created.
The probe goes to the proxy, which reaches into the assigner index to determine where to find the right buckets.
Taking content from expensive RAM to disc “itself underpins a complete paradigm shift,” Liu claims. It is a necessary one, as “whenever you cross some scale boundary, something has to shift.”
He places the patent application in the context of the evolution of databases and information retrieval, with vector databases as the latest in the current family. This next step is based on the ability to use an approximation “that’s due to the nature of the vectors themselves.”
The shift has received a lot of attention in the large language model community, he says, in part due to the attention large-scale generative neural networks like ChatGPT have received.
Embeddings from language models are different from facial recognition, but the same concept applies, Liu says.
“I believe our unique contribution or innovation was surrounding embedding vectors that were trained to differ, that were trained to tell things apart. This formulation naturally applies to facial recognition, because facial recognition pushes the boundary in this formulation to the extreme.”
FIDO Alliance gets ITU approval for two specifications in passwordless authentication
The International Telecommunication Union’s Telecommunication Standardization Sector (ITU-T) has recognized two of the FIDO Alliance’s remote authentication specifications — FIDO UAF 1.2 and CTAP 2.1 — as international standards.
The Alliance says in an announcement that the recognition as official ITU-T Recommendations, conferred by ITU members including national administrations and the world’s leading ICT companies, is a milestone in its passwordless authentication tech development.
The approval also means the specifications are part of the ITU’s official global standards for developing information and communication technologies infrastructure.
FIDO UAF 1.2 is a mobile standard for authentication without passwords using biometrics and other signals to authenticate users to their local device. CTAP 2.1 allows the use of external authenticators (FIDO Security Keys, mobile devices) for authentication on FIDO2-enabled browsers and operating systems over USB, NFC, or BLE connections for a passwordless, second-factor or multi-factor authentication experience.
“The FIDO Alliance is improving online authentication through open standards based on public key cryptography that make authentication stronger and easier to use than passwords or one-time passcodes. One of the ways that we fulfill this mission is by submitting our mature technical specifications to internationally recognized standards groups like ITU-T for formal standardization,” says David Turner, senior director of standards development at the FIDO Alliance. “This recognition from ITU-T illustrates the maturity of FIDO authentication technology and complements our web standardization work with the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C).”
Heung Youl Youm, chairman of ITU-T Study Group 17, under whose responsibility the new ITU-T recommendations are, remarked:
“Predecessors of these FIDO UAF and CTAP specifications were first adopted as ITU standards in 2018. ITU-T Study Group 17 will continue to strengthen its collaboration with the FIDO Alliance. These two FIDO Alliance specifications, adopted as ITU standards recently, are being widely used in various industries such as the financial sector to provide strong online authentication based on public key cryptography and various user verification methods.”
“These new ITU standards will provide a concrete basis for the two FIDO specifications to be adopted across the 193 ITU Member States.”
Abbie Barbir, another official of the ITU-T’s working group on identity management and telebiometrics architecture and mechanisms, says “this work will help address and solve the security limitations of passwords and move the world closer to passwordless solutions.”
Daon granted patents for verification of government-issued IDs
Digital identity software maker Daon has announced securing two new patents from the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO).
Introducing patents #17/959,731 and #17/971,961 reportedly enhances Daon’s ability to deliver advanced identity trust solutions by improving the verification process for government-issued IDs. The announcement refers to the complexity of ID documents, with more than 550 different types issued in the U.S. alone.
The recently patented technology enhances document verification for global businesses, enabling them to validate, authenticate and secure customer identities throughout various stages of the customer lifecycle.
“These newly issued patents reflect our commitment to innovation and solidify our position at the forefront of SaaS identity solutions,” comments Daon CEO Tom Grissen.
The executive adds that this marks Daon’s second patent exclusively dedicated to their newly launched SaaS platform, TrustX.
“Our advanced technologies cater to an array of deployment needs, offering on-premises, hosted, or entirely SaaS solutions,” Grissen explains. “We’re empowering our clients with unparalleled control over their identity verification processes.”
TrustX is a cloud-based platform that utilizes artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) to reduce fraud and improve the customer experience in digital identity management.
It offers a suite of tools, including identity verification, authentication and regulatory compliance. TrustX also features a user-friendly interface for creating customized workflows and a dashboard with reporting capabilities, Daon says.
“We’re excited about the impact these patents will have on our technology and our customers,” Grissen concludes. “We’re continuing to redefine what’s possible in digital identity trust.”
Daon also recently entered a new collaboration with ESL FACEIT Group (EFG), an esports company, to provide verification and authentication solutions for the gaming industry.
The partnership will see Daon offer its identity verification and authentication solutions through a single SaaS platform (possibly TrustX).
EFG will utilize Daon’s electronic know-your-customer (eKYC) capabilities via a web onboarding app and face biometrics-only registration using software development kits (SDKs).
The partnership aims to address the increasing problem of fraudulent gaming and seeks to create a more equitable competitive environment.
During its integration with EFG, Daon confirmed it successfully verified tens of thousands of gamers from various countries worldwide, processing a wide range of ID documents encompassing 700 different types from over 100 nations.
“The rapid growth of esports, although positive for the industry, comes at a cost. Gaming sites need to be prepared to offer users industry-leading technologies in order to combat fraudulent behavior,” warns Clive Bourke, President of EMEA and APAC at Daon.
Smart Engines ID document scanning tech receives US patent
Smart Engines has been granted a U.S. patent for a document scanning algorithm that uses smartphone video cameras, the company announced in a statement. Called weighted integration, this technology is already in an array of Smart Engine SDKs.
Smart Engines SDK is based on the weighted integration method for scanning text in a video stream that the company’s scientists invented in 2015. It is used in the Smart ID Engine to scan ID documents, the Smart Code Engine to scan QR codes and credit cards, and the Smart Document Engine to scan business documents.
The scanning and optical character recognition (OCR) system takes advantage of a smartphones’ streaming capacity. The new method described in the patent evaluates incoming frames from a video stream and selects the best 50 percent of frames based on image focus accuracy and recognition scores. It assigns a weight to each character based on the criteria.
If part of a field for a character were obscured by a finger, the weight of the character would be closer to zero, while a clearly visible character would have a value closer to one. Once the weights are assigned, the result of the video stream analysis is reconstructed using the new algorithm. This method, referred to as weighted integration, improves document scanning quality.
This method of per-character weighting improves recognition accuracy in cases where the ID document is captured at an angle, with poor lighting, in dark environments, or with glare.
“Per-character weighting also has a positive impact on the recognition result when the document contains long, continuous lines — for example, a machine-readable zone,” says Smart Engine CEO Vladimir Arlazarov.
The technology also uses GreenOCR character recognition technology, which minimizes energy consumption while enabling high speed and quality. One instance of recognition uses the energy equivalent to 0.0001g of CO2. Planting one hectare of oak forest will offset the ecological damage caused by all the recognitions for the foreseeable future, the company says.
Paravision takes top spot in accuracy matching to NIST’s new high-angle dataset
An algorithm from Paravision has been found most accurate in the newest category added to the National Institute of Standards and Technology’s Face Recognition Vendor Test 1:1 Verification.
The NIST FRVT 1:1 added the ‘Visaborder Yaw≥45 degrees’ category was added for the agency’s February 9, 2023 update. The dataset is described as a “new set of non-frontal portrait to border comparisons.”
Paravision’s latest algorithm was found in the June 16 update to have a false non-match rate (FNMR) of 0.0025 percent with the false match rate (FMR) set to 0.000001 percent. A pair of algorithms from Chinese developer Cloudwalk were next-most accurate, followed by Paravision’s previous submission.
The company also notes in its announcement a steep drop-off in the accuracy of algorithms tested against the new database after the top five.
Paravision also claims to have scored the top overall result among biometrics developers from the U.S., UK and EU. The company’s algorithms were found among the five most accurate in two mugshot datasets and the kiosk category, and within the top 10 on two more datasets related to borders.
“In evaluation after evaluation, we’ve seen Paravision technology and products ‘Built with Paravision’ judged as the best performing globally. This particular test is a good indicator as to why: We do extremely well on high quality images while also delivering outstanding performance when conditions get tough, users aren’t experts, or user experiences are less constrained,” says Charlie Rice, CTO of Paravision.
NIST also breaks down the results by different demographics, with the latest evaluation showing Paravision’s worst case single-demographic differential is substantially lower than all competitors, according to the announcement.
The latest algorithm submitted by Paravision will be a part of the company’s forthcoming Gen 6 facial recognition software, according to the announcement. Paravision’s Gen 6 technology is scheduled for delivery to customers this summer.
VC, Alphabet fund development of AML products
Internal and external investment in digital identity-based, crime-curbing AI continues.
Venture fund Notion Capital has put $11 million into fintech Resistant AI’s series A round, which already held $16.6 million. GV, the corporate venture capital unit of Alphabet, participated in an earlier round.
That announcement came a week after Alphabet’s subsidiary, Google Cloud, announced the availability of an anti-money laundering AI algorithm.
Everyone involved in both events is motivated by big numbers that keep getting bigger — like $2 trillion. That is how much money the United Nations estimates is laundered annually.
SmartSearch, another anti-money laundering software vendor, a sponsored market research by Censuswide that reportedly found that laundering through just cryptocurrency in the United Kingdom last year involved £6.4 billion (US$8.1 billion).
Little wonder why, then, venture firms are interested in an equity stake in any play that looks competent.
Resistant reports that its fraud prevention, KYC and AML customer base doubled last year, and annual recurring revenue grew sixfold.
Resistant executives say they are plowing the new investment into the expansion of its product and headcount. They also want to move into new geographic markets.
Of particular focus for the executives is automated attacks that create fraudulent identities at large scales.
Google Cloud, meanwhile, hopes to deter businesses from using manually derived rules for alerting to likely fraud. The rules are not impossible to discern and nothing good happens after that.
Its proprietary machine learning-based algorithm, according to the company, generates risk scores that are part of a software process that is more nuanced and accurate. The scores are based on KYC data, network behavior, transactional patterns and other data points that each bank tracks and can be updated often.
According to Google Cloud, an international bank reported that it detects two to four times more true positive risk with the new AML software compared to its previous process.
A nice $14M seed for an AI company making model-monitoring software
Machine learning software maker Deepchecks has received a healthy $14 million seed round. Company executives have taken the opportunity to also announced that they are embracing open-source model monitoring.
Alpha Wave Ventures led the funding with Hetz Ventures and Grove Ventures participating.
Of the two announcements, closing a seed round and opening monitoring to the community, Deepchecks clearly is more thrilled to talk about the software. It is hard to find more information about the seed round, in fact.
But the open-source decision gets pages of detail and a gif from the old TV show “Friends.”
Deepchecks’ software for validating and monitoring artificial intelligence and machine learning models for errors, bias and unintended harms is intended to shepherd projects from development to production.
The company says that its primary focus is “to make a dent in the way machine learning (ML) models are validated.”
Sometime this month, according to Deepchecks, they will make their machine learning monitoring software generally available.
Company executives admit that they were surprised by how fast large language model-based software has found acceptance — especially by non-data scientist who still feel they know enough about AI.
DHS S&T earmarks $1.7M to build W3C standards into digital wallets
The U.S. Department of Homeland Security is making $1.7 million available for participants in contracts to develop and adapt digital wallets for security checks.
DHS revealed further details on the digital wallets’ solicitation being run by its Science & Technology Directorate in an announcement for the “Privacy Preserving Digital Credential Wallets & Verifiers” SVIP Topic Call.
As described in the application posting, DHS S&T is looking for digital wallets that can support the broad range of credentials compatible with World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) Verifiable Credential Data Model (VCDM) and W3C Decentralized Identifiers (DID) standards. They should be portable and based on standards and interoperable, highly secure, multi-functional, and should preserve user privacy, according to the new announcement. The agency is also after software-based verifier implementations for mobile devices running iOS and Android, likewise supporting W3C standards and supporting DHS credentials.
“Preserving the privacy of individuals as they use digital wallets to store their credentials is deeply important in ensuring the secure, confidential nature of their digital interactions in an increasingly interconnected world,” says Melissa Oh, SVIP managing director, in the announcement.
DHS Chief Privacy Officer Mason Clutter says the investment in “building blocks” for privacy preserving digital credentials demonstrates the department’s commitment to privacy and can be a model for others.
An industry day will be held on August 18, and applications for the solicitation are due on September 15, 2023.
These Weeks’ News by Categories
Access Control:
- Okta adds Worldcoin authentication to Auth0 marketplace
- Passkeys advance with FIDO Alliance Guidelines, $3.5M for 0pass
- New facial authentication module launched by Alcatraz AI for easy integration
- Sentry Enterprises adds biometrics to Allegion products for secure access
- UK’s One Login plugs along. 8 services on board, 92 more hoped for soon
- US pols go deeper investigating alleged Login.gov fraud
- Access management firm NineID launches with a $1.2M round
- Indonesia developing facial recognition system for public transportation system access
- Dutch politicians speak out in support of facial recognition at football games
- Texas preps for bids to upgrade its digital ID and IAM system
Consumer Electronics:
- Apple expands passkey play, gets patent for Touch ID on desktops
- US feds to biometrics collectors: Knock it off. We mean it
- Gait, face biometrics to be showcased in concept car at VivaTech
Mobile Biometrics:
- Identity verification providers team up for compliant sector-specific onboarding
- Biometrics registration on the way to the US border is not getting easier for migrants
- Integrated Biometrics scanners now compliant with MOSIP Android specs
- Border protection in US debuts biometric app using FaceTec liveness
- Apple expands passkey play, gets patent for Touch ID on desktops
- DHS S&T earmarks $1.7M to build W3C standards into digital wallets
- Notarize launches Proof to bind digital signatures to ID with Persona biometrics
- Persona wins major gaming client as age verification grows up
- Daon granted patents for verification of government-issued IDs
- Patent granted to ID R&D for way to increase liveness detection speed and accuracy
- Civil society groups warn about EU Digital ID Wallet privacy, discrimination risks
- Details of HID tech partner program for mobile solutions revealed
- EU Digital Identity Wallet technical specifications out in the next weeks
- Pilot shows digital travel credentials’ evolution in progress
Financial Services:
- Deadline looms to link India’s digital identity and tax accounts
- Identity verification providers team up for compliant sector-specific onboarding
- VC, Alphabet fund development of AML products
- ‘200% rise’ in voice scams in APAC as gangs pivot to call centers
- UIDAI refuses disclosure on liveness project as Indian police crack down on cybercrime
- EU financial associations want traditional payments excluded from eIDAS regulation
- Trulioo claims huge increase in KYB adoption as US tightens ID verification requirements
- How lenders can decode creditworthiness and fraud through device analytics
- Biometrics are moving the restaurant industry beyond cards and phones
- Biometrics rolling out at scale in maturing markets with next ones on horizon
- Bank biometrics market $18B by ’32; new deals for Illuma, Journey, BioCatch
- Sumsub launches deepfake detection tool, announces pivot to ‘full-cycle verification’
- India’s Account Aggregator DPI could promote equitable financial access: World Bank
- Notarize launches Proof to bind digital signatures to ID with Persona biometrics
- Zwipe prepares for multiple biometric payment card rollouts in Middle East
- UK financial authorities work with industry on digital ID, US regulator signals support
Civil / National ID:
- Deadline looms to link India’s digital identity and tax accounts
- Japan seeks Singapore’s experience in national digital ID rollout
- Birth registration efforts advance with funding support announcements for Cameroon, Tanzania
- Tentative political agreement reached on revised EU digital ID framework proposal
- Regula updates ID document scanning to detect image forgeries, snuff out ‘ghost’ images
- Early and proactive public engagement needed for DPI projects: panel
- EU financial associations want traditional payments excluded from eIDAS regulation
- Socure adds document verification engine from Berbix in $70M acquisition
- Scotland plans improvements to digital identity service based on pilot
- Digital ID case studies suggest solvable technical issues, but raise fundamental questions
- Digital ID enrollment efforts scale up in Kuwait, Nigeria
- Biometrics rolling out at scale in maturing markets with next ones on horizon
- Japan PM faces resistance to replacement of health insurance cards with digital ID
- WEF publishes report on decentralized ID, warns of biometrics risks
- India’s Account Aggregator DPI could promote equitable financial access: World Bank
- The case for an integrated digital CRVS system for African countries
- Morocco will introduce digital IDs into health services
- Rollout of biometric CAT2s begins in Colorado as legacy scanners reject state IDs
- Civil society groups warn about EU Digital ID Wallet privacy, discrimination risks
- National digital ID developments coming from Malaysia, Jordan, South Korea
- Bhutan’s digital ID bill scales through National Assembly amid accountability concerns
- Are decentralized IDs a question of culture? Experts discuss Web3
- Theft of driver’s license data in Louisiana could be a big test for digital ID
- EU Digital Identity Wallet technical specifications out in the next weeks
- India expands partnership on digital public infrastructure experience-sharing at G20
- Namibian lawmakers examine bill to streamline civil registration, lower age for ID cards
Government Services & Elections:
- Jamaica invests in biometrics to fight election fraud
- Philippines wants to add iris biometrics to tackle double voter registration
- Japan seeks Singapore’s experience in national digital ID rollout
- Tentative political agreement reached on revised EU digital ID framework proposal
- UK’s One Login plugs along. 8 services on board, 92 more hoped for soon
- US pols go deeper investigating alleged Login.gov fraud
- Australia’s new digital ID strategy calls for more biometrics, stronger data protection
- Idemia reveals details on Lithuania’s biometric border system
- Theft of driver’s license data in Louisiana could be a big test for digital ID
Facial Recognition:
- Daon adds algorithms to improve deepfake detection for voice and face biometrics
- Use of face biometrics sharply criticized in two US criminal cases
- US facial recognition developers jockey for position in NIST accuracy testing
- New facial authentication module launched by Alcatraz AI for easy integration
- How Clearview developed its method for fast search on an above-billion scale database
- It has been a bumpy ride of late in biometrics privacy and products
- No dismissal in unique face biometric court fight in NYC
- Australia finds that its privacy laws apply to Clearview
- Even accurate and unbiased facial recognition brings privacy, cost harms, groups say
- PixLab and FaceIO update privacy policy for face biometrics, age verification
- Bank biometrics market $18B by ’32; new deals for Illuma, Journey, BioCatch
- UK tests biometric breath analysis
- BIPA might be changing, but not soon enough for some class action defendants
- Indonesia developing facial recognition system for public transportation system access
- Dutch politicians speak out in support of facial recognition at football games
- CloudWalk joins $421M funding round for chipmaker amid potential AI pivot
- Ireland to introduce a bill on retrospective facial recognition use by police
- Idemia grabs a piece of Digi Yatra airport biometrics rollout
- NYC grocery stores fight proposed facial recognition ban
- Discredited biometric surveillance project in Malta closed, but is it?
Fingerprint Recognition:
- Integrated Biometrics scanners now compliant with MOSIP Android specs
- Sentry Enterprises adds biometrics to Allegion products for secure access
- Idemia I&S unveils handheld fingerprint biometric device for law enforcement
- Zwipe cuts back on R&D and marketing in hopes of being profitable
- Tech5 claims victory in contactless fingerprint liveness competition
- Zwipe prepares for multiple biometric payment card rollouts in Middle East
Iris / Eye Recognition:
- IrisGuard biometrics to support Ethiopia’s G2C payments, financial inclusion
- FBI’s iris biometrics repository reaches 2.5 million with tech from Iris ID
- As iris biometrics takes on greater prominence, Neurotechnology touts NIST results
- Philippines wants to add iris biometrics to tackle double voter registration
Voice Biometrics:
- Daon adds algorithms to improve deepfake detection for voice and face biometrics
- Researchers defeat voice biometric security by targeting common liveness approaches
- Generative speech firm ElevenLabs raises $19M, launches tool to snuff out deepfakes
- BIPA might be changing, but not soon enough for some class action defendants
- Meta declines to make voice tool public as BixeLab highlights voice fraud concerns
Liveness Detection:
- UIDAI refuses disclosure on liveness project as Indian police crack down on cybercrime
- Border protection in US debuts biometric app using FaceTec liveness
- Sumsub launches deepfake detection tool, announces pivot to ‘full-cycle verification’
- Tech5 claims victory in contactless fingerprint liveness competition
- Patent granted to ID R&D for way to increase liveness detection speed and accuracy
Biometrics Industry Events
Digital Transformation via Open Public Stacks: Jul 20, 2023 — Jul 21, 2023
Cyber DSA 2023: Aug 15, 2023 — Aug 17, 2023
BIOSIG 2023–22nd international conference of the biometrics special interest group: Sep 20, 2023 — Sep 22, 2023
AI and Big Data Expo Europe: Sep 26, 2023 — Sep 27, 2023
TRUSTECH: Nov 28, 2023 — Nov 30, 2023
AI and Big Data Expo Global: Nov 30, 2023 — Dec 1, 2023
Egypt Defence Expo — EDEX: Dec 4, 2023 — Dec 7, 2023
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