BT/ FacePhi, authID add face biometrics platforms to Oracle, Microsoft cloud services

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Paradigm

35 min readFeb 28, 2022

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Biometrics biweekly vol. 32, 14th February — 28th February

TL;DR

Authentication providers FacePhi and authID have each unveiled partnerships with Oracle and Microsoft respectively to provide their face biometric solutions to the cloud services of the big tech companies.
Microsoft customers need to step-up authentication, says Microsoft
Apple ditches fingerprint sensors on upcoming iPhones, pushes hard on Face ID through masks
NIST updates federal government IDV options for remote digital identity
Unissey, ME Group face biometrics each pass liveness compliance testing by CLR Labs
Ford’s biometric sentry for people, critters inside and outside the car is awarded a patent
Clearview AI, Trust Stamp add biometrics research leaders amid patent pushes
Trust Stamp secures funding for QR code medical records with biometric security
Anonybit partners with Aware to preserve biometric template privacy
Tech5 identifies five key principles for training of biometrics systems
AuthenticID partners with 1Kosmos to enhance digital ID applications worldwide
Digital ID verification terminal patent filing from Global ID published in Europe
A new smartphone from Xiaomi has become the first mobile device to implement the second-generation version of Fingerprint Cards‘ curved capacitive fingerprint sensor
Biometrics come to Samsung digital wallets, reborn MoviePass
Strong results for Neurotechnology’s face biometrics in NIST FRVT reports
Neustar, LumenVox add voice biometrics to partners’ cloud computing platforms
Veridas wins biometric authentication deal for videoconferencing, omni-channel services
rf IDEAS to boost MFA portfolio with ID R&D biometrics
Suprema attains data security, privacy certificates for access control platforms
Alcatraz AI demos biometric access control system at ISC West
Hummingbirds AI to present facial recognition security system at SXSW Pitch event
Regula upgrades biometric liveness detection, announces ID document milestone
Telpo reviews success of facial recognition terminals at 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics
Scandit is now a unicorn with $150M funding to advance ID document scans, computer vision
Beyond Identity raises $100M to expand passwordless authentication worldwide
Next Biometrics wins a $352,000 recurring fingerprint sensor order from Ngrave
OCR Labs raises $30M to grow global face biometrics presence, plans to double staff
Onfido, IDnow ride selfie biometrics to record growth in Q4 2021
Biometric payment cards: Zwipe’s latest market, FPC offers guidance for banks
Trulioo selfie biometrics secures 4 new banking customers
D4t4 behavioral biometrics trigger automated fraud action with partnership extension
Appgate launches behavioral biometrics service for real-time online fraud prevention
Winning.I, Svort each launches biometric IDV initiatives for remote govt, financial services
SenseTime is taking a detour from facial recognition into an AI system that detects manufacturing defects
Hyundai’s Genesis was awarded by a Canadian automobile media association for a fingerprint reader and passenger radar
The Society of Automotive Engineers (SAE) explores how radar and cameras in cars can enhance safety through biometrics
FBI warns of SIM swap surge, Veridas outlines biometrics fix
Afghanistan goes for biometric SIM registration to fight crime
IRS drops biometric authentication requirement, prepares for Login.Gov after filing date
UK government selects Deloitte to produce One Login digital identity app
UK proposes IDV and biometrics for tech platforms to rein in anonymous online trolls
Western Australia updates digital identity strategy for unified public service access
ATB Ventures works with the Canadian government on digital ID proof of concept
MOSIP partnership with Ethiopia on foundational digital ID expands, along with the ecosystem
Zimbabwe EC urged to do more despite apparent biometric voter registration success
Idalika partnership brings Smart Engines OCR to staff recruitment
Cambodia, Jamaica to roll out digital IDs, Bangladesh plans issuance for farmers
Ghana unveils plan to assign digital IDs to newborns
iOS/MacOS users pass facial biometric checks faster according to Sumsub
Researchers from Lancaster University and Hany Farid from the University of California — Berkeley say the best deepfakes have become indistinguishable from real images
Researchers from the Darmstadt University of Applied Sciences in Germany have recently published a new paper detailing a method to use artificial intelligence to remove tattoos from photos of people, with potential biometrics implications
AFIS biometric software market to reach $68B by 2030: report
Digital ID fraud mostly through web channel in 2021: Shufti Pro report
Highlights from the FindBiometrics Year in Review online summit
Humanode Fireside on biometric modalities and their limitations
Biometrics 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:

Despite facial recognition misgivings, we seem ready to trust synthetic faces

The European Commission’s effort to create standards for the use of facial recognition is ongoing, but as important as that work is, should politicians be giving more attention to a mirror-image danger?

For all the very real concern about how accurately facial recognition algorithms can recognize a human face, new research finds that people not only get fooled by AI-generated faces, they trust deepfake faces more than authentic photos.

The researchers, Sophie Nightingale from Lancaster University and Hany Farid from the University of California — Berkeley, say the best deepfakes have become indistinguishable from real images.

Automated detection tools have been developed for spotting fakes, according to the researchers, but “current techniques are not efficient or accurate enough to contend with the torrent of daily uploads.”

Worse, their work suggests that people tend to trust deepfake images more than those of actual people.

In one experiment, 223 participants rated on a graduated scale the trustworthiness of 128 faces taken from an 800-image dataset. Synthetic faces were judged more trustworthy 7.7 percent of the time.

Images of females were rated decidedly more trustworthy compared to images of males. There were no major differences between images of synthetic people of different races.

The researchers theorize that synthetic faces are more trustworthy because they are averages of physical attributes used to train AI facial recognition tools.

That theory is not being tested in South Korea, but something as interesting is. A political candidate there is being digitized in an effort to generate more votes.

According to the International Business Times, Yoon Suk-yeol has become his own deepfake — AI Yoon. The avatar is campaigning for the flesh-and-blood pol.

And actually, none of these efforts to fool/entertain people are new. When India’s current prime minister, Narendra Modi ran for the top office in 2014, he put lookalikes out giving speeches.

At the time, media reports found that few if any Indian voters were put off by attending rallies with their almost-candidate. They often said they found the imposter trustworthy.

Erasing tattoos from photos via AI could aid facial recognition systems

Researchers from the Darmstadt University of Applied Sciences in Germany have recently published a new paper detailing a method to use artificial intelligence to remove tattoos from photos of people, with potential biometrics implications.

According to lead researcher Mathias Ibsen, face painting and tattoos can potentially impair the performance of computer vision systems like facial recognition algorithms by altering what models “expect to see” in key areas of the face.

To better understand and mitigate the effect of facial tattoos in facial analysis systems, Ibsen and his team believe an increased number of large datasets of images of individuals with and without tattoos are needed.

To this end, the researchers propose a generator for automatically adding realistic tattoos to facial images.

“To create a facial image with tattoos, the face is first divided into face regions using landmark detection thereafter tattoo placements can be found,” the paper reads.
“Subsequently, deep reconstruction maps and cut-out maps can be estimated from the input image. Thereafter, the information is combined to realistically blend tattoos to the facial image.”

They then demonstrated the feasibility of the generation by training two deep learning-based models for removing tattoos from face images.

The models used were pix2pix, a supervised conditional generative adversarial network (GAN) for image-to-image translation, and SkinDeep, a pre-existing model for removing body tattoos utilizing well-known components which have shown “good results for other image-to-image translation tasks.”

Results using the novel mode reportedly showed that it was possible to remove facial tattoos from real images without degrading the quality of the image.

Moreover, the paper suggested that, by using the proposed deep learning-based tattoo removal before extracting and comparing facial features, facial recognition accuracy was increased overall.

“The comparison scores are not significantly affected for the pix2pix and SkinDeep models which only showed moderate capabilities of removing tattoos from facial images,” the paper reads.
“However, for SkinDeep, which has been trained on the synthetic database, it is shown that the dissimilarity score on average gets lower, which indicates that the recognition performance might improve.”

Main News:

FacePhi, authID add face biometrics platforms to Oracle, Microsoft cloud services

FacePhi announced it joined a network of Oracle partners and now offers its facial recognition and biometric onboarding service on the Oracle Cloud Marketplace, further expanding its market reach.

An announcement by FacePhi says the partner program known as ‘Oracle PartnerNetwork’ is designed for partners to accelerate the transition to cloud computing and boost business results for customers.

The company also says its selfie biometrics and other services are now available on the Oracle Cloud Marketplace, a centralized hub where Oracle customers can find programs and applications that are trusted by Oracle for business solutions.

Javier Mira, president and CEO of the Spanish firm, says the partnership will allow expansion into new markets, strengthen FacePhi’s presence in industries like finance, and increase the visibility of its identity verification solutions. “We look forward to providing digital solutions for Oracle users, and helping ensure safe and fast operations,” Mira says.

authID.ai selfie authentication to strengthen security for Microsoft cloud services

authID.ai will provide its selfie biometric authentication solution to users of Microsoft’s Office 365 and Azure cloud computing service, according to a statement by the company.

The New York-based identity and the biometric firm says flagship face biometrics service ‘Verified’ is now integrated into Microsoft Office 365 and Azure as multi-factor authentication (MFA) method. Verified is described by authID.ai as a face biometric solution that analyzes a selfie of the user upon their log-in with Microsoft credentials to verify their identity as a defense against cybersecurity threats and fraud. The company says it also reduces the “the hassle and costs” of deploying cumbersome, legacy authentication like passwords and secret questions.

authID.ai also joined the Microsoft Partner Network, which places its offerings as a trusted vendor by Microsoft.

Tom Thimot, CEO of authID.ai, comments about the partnership, “As a Microsoft Partner, we are further empowering enterprises to enhance control of their security infrastructure and provide an easier, more fortified authentication experience for their teams. On the heels of our recent deployment of CloudConnect to the Auth0 marketplace, we are excited that our new biometric integration with the Microsoft Office 365 and Azure platform will protect the data and IP of an even larger cohort of enterprises and professionals across the globe.”

Apple ditches fingerprint sensors on upcoming iPhones, pushes hard on Face ID through masks

Several published reports say that Apple has abandoned previously announced plans to fit an under-display fingerprint biometric scanner in the iPhone. Face ID for masks, however, appears to be a go for iOS 15.4.

No one has succeeded in getting anyone anywhere to talk on the record about the changes being installed in the latest iOS 15.4 public betas in the field now.

For the most security-conscious iPhone owners, it is disappointing news. Two biometric sensors could make access to an iPhone significantly more secure.

It might be encouraging for others, however. Apple had been trying to get an under-display print sensor in a phone for some time without apparent success. Moving on from what some considered a tricky and redundant feature should speed development of iOS.

Apple had prized that redundancy. It was seen as another layer of protection in the face of biometric presentation attacks that the company admitted was a vulnerability.

It could show up as a future phone (or watch, laptop, keyboard, remote or car), but according to iDrop News, Apple last month started moving all the fingerprint people and resources to Face ID.

It would seem the biometric focus now is on the face, giving devices the ability to unlock an iPhone even if the owner is wearing a mask.

Putting the Face ID sensors under the glass is another priority, iDrop News has reported. Apple patented this approach last year.

Unissey, ME Group face biometrics each pass liveness compliance testing by CLR Labs

French face biometrics firm Unissey has received the ISO/IEC 30107–3 standard Level 2 substantial certification after passing presentation attack detection (PAD) testing by the European laboratory, Cabinet Louis Reynaud Labs (CLR Labs).

The tests took place over a period of two months and aimed to establish the precision of Unissey’s face biometrics algorithms in detecting presentation attacks using passive liveness detection.

To this end, CLR Labs tried to spoof Unissey’s face recognition systems using high-quality masks of different materials (silicone or latex), and specifically-designed PAIs (presentation attack instruments).

The evaluation process included over 2,000 presentation attacks against the biometrics system, both on mobile and desktop devices.

According to the company, all the attacks were detected by the TOE (Target of evaluation), which recorded an attack presentation classification error rate (APCER) of zero.

“With CLR Labs’ substantial Level 2 Conformity Assessment, this is yet another sign of confidence and robustness for Unissey and its facial biometric authentication technology,” the company said in a press release.
“It proves its ability to detect attacks when presenting ultra-sophisticated biometric artifacts. Based on a simple video selfie of less than one second, the solution remotely confirms that the user is who he or she claims to be, while instantly blocking even the most complex fraud attempts.”

The certification is the second one from CLR Labs, which conducted Unissey’s first evaluation of the ISO/IEC 30107 standard back in October 2021.

More recently, the startup has passed the iBeta PAD Evaluation Level 2 on both mobile and laptop formats.

ME Group liveness for ID document enrollment confirmed

ME Group has likewise scored an APCER of 0 percent in its biometric PAD test from CLR Labs.

The company provides photo booths for consumers to use in enrolling images for ID documents, making biometric liveness detection a crucial feature for preventing identity fraud during the document issuance process. ME Group notes it has observed the use of morphed images presented in the form of a photo or a screen in order to carry out biometric presentation attacks.

The testing commenced in September of 2021, and simulated thousands of attacks against ME Group’s liveness technology involving people from a range of demographics, according to the announcement.

“Our liveness detection technology has been specially designed for the highly controlled lighting environment of a photo booth, helping to ensure that our products are the most biometrically secure they can be,” states ME Group Biometric and 3D Expert Christian Croll. “It offers a smart experience to the end user as it does not require any action from them, by incorporating a convenient smart passive liveness detection mode.”
“Preventing morphing presentation attacks is at the top of the European political agenda,” notes CLR Labs Director Stéfane Mouille. “The European Commission is updating its electronic passport legislation to introduce the upcoming European standards published by the CEN/CENELEC and we are honoured and proud that ME Group has selected our laboratory to perform its evaluation.”

Ford’s biometric sentry for people, critters inside and outside the car is awarded a patent

Biometrics could be deepening the affection some people (surely, mostly men) feel for their vehicles.

Ford Global Technologies, in Dearborn, Michigan, has been awarded a patent for facial recognition systems built into vehicles that would recognize their drivers and unlock the doors on sight. The publication number is US 2022/0041134 A1.

The basic technology is relatively simple by the standards of face biometrics and surveillance, and it is a logical follow-on to facial recognition systems being installed and planned for vehicles, according to trade publisher Ford Authority.

But the patent not only describes a suite of new functions made possible with face biometrics, it also describes a way to lower the power toll such systems can have on vehicle batteries, according to Ford Global, a research and development unit within Ford.

Inventors Ali Hassani and Ryan Edwin Hanson, both from Michigan, see the system being able to start a vehicle and maintain a “secure idle” once it recognizes one of multiple saved faces approaching day or night.

It would also be able to monitor some health conditions, including body temperature, of human and pet occupants. The car could be started to keep temperatures safe for pets left behind, too.

Animals outside the vehicle could be monitored as well. Infrared cameras could peer through bushes to identify various examples of wildlife and analyze threat levels by the critter’s gait and perceived stress.

Always-on biometric systems doing this kind of computing could easily drain even a brawny truck, so Hassani and Hanson designed a two-tier backend.

A lower-power, lower-resolution and lower-lighted classification subsystem operate continuously, looking at the surroundings like a person who wears glasses perceive the world until they put their glasses on.

Pixels would be verified and the locations nearby would be plotted using ID techniques such as support vector machines.

Once a threshold signal is reached, the so-called biometric key power mode feature would start. A secondary classification algorithm, with secure biometric identification and “a potential liveness verification” would take over.

Clearview AI, Trust Stamp add biometrics research leaders amid patent pushes

Clearview AI has filed a patent application to protect its method of fast and low-cost face biometric algorithm training, co-authored by Terence Liu, who has been revealed as the company’s vice president of research.

An interview with CEO Hoan Ton-That by Reuters recounts how Liu, who advanced Clearview’s prototype with Ton-That in the company’s early days, left his senior software engineer position at Bloomberg LP to rejoin the facial recognition provider.

The patent describes a method of using artificial intelligence to manipulate images by adding glasses, masks and other occlusions to images used in biometric algorithm training. Ton-That says the company uses 70 million online photos for facial recognition training.

Ton-That says that biometric processing costs per face have been reduced by 95 percent by Clearview’s development efforts, which include two new database technologies.

Clearview also intends to add five engineers to its currently 12-strong team, among 18 intended hires this coming year.

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Trust Stamp has filed multiple patent applications in early-2022, according to a paid promotional report from ProactiveInvestors, which also reveals that University of Malta Associate Professor Reuben Farrugia, a twenty-year veteran of the biometrics industry, has been appointed the company’s Malta research director.

Farrugia is an internationally recognized biometrics expert, who boasts over 70 peer-reviewed publications in international journals, the company says. He is Malta’s national contact for the European Association for Biometrics (EAB), and current IEEE senior member, after previously serving as General Chair of the IEEE’s International Workshop on Biometrics and Forensics.

“Trust Stamp has established a strong research-oriented science team with experts in artificial intelligence, cryptography, and biometrics, whose global backgrounds and diverse experience have driven innovation as the basis for the Company’s rapid success over the last six years.”

Anonybit partners with Aware to preserve biometric template privacy

Decentralized solutions provider Anonybit has entered a new partnership with face biometrics developer Aware to build highly secure, and privacy-focused biometric templates with a focus on government use cases.

According to the firms, the rise in data breaches across different industries may soon include an increasing number of biometric templates, thus calling for an urgent necessity of improving the security of such data.

“As data breaches continue to rise in volume and severity around the globe, and biometrics become more ubiquitous in our daily lives, it’s incumbent upon all of us to address overwhelming concerns around how our identity information is being stored and managed,” says Anonybit CEO Frances Zelazny. “We are excited to partner with Aware to develop industry-leading solutions that will protect highly sensitive biometric templates and, in turn, our users’ privacy.”

From a technology standpoint, the partnership will see the combination of Aware’s biometric technology and Anonybit’s approach to storing data as anonymized bits via a peer-to-peer network composed of various types of nodes that store and compute the biometric match.

As this data is stored in a decentralized fashion and the anonymized bits never leave the nodes, they cannot be used to reconstruct the original image, even if an attacker managed to get hold of some of them.

Applications will include passwordless authentication, access control, time and attendance, and visitor management.

Tech5 identifies five key principles for training of biometrics systems

Tech5 has published a list of five key principles the company uses when training and deploying its biometrics system across face, fingerprint, and iris applications, with the hope that other firms will follow their lead.

“Today we are outlining our principles for using biometric data and technology development, hoping for such rules to be adopted by other companies involved in the design and development of biometric algorithms,” says Tech5 Strategic Advisor Rob Haslam.

The first of them refers to the use of consent-based, “depersonalized” data for training of biometric algorithms, and builds on a separate announcement Tech5 made earlier this month that it has a way to build entirely consent-based facial image databases.

Secondly, the company mentioned regular training and benchmarking of the algorithms using the aforementioned data to ensure these technologies remain accurate and robust.

The second principle merges with the third: the development of technologies free from biases and “inclusive of people from all walks of life.”

The fourth key principle on Tech5’s list outlines the firm’s commitment to contribute to the development of biometrics standards worldwide with the goal of raising the level of expertise in the market.

To this end, Tech5 regularly contributes its expertise and market knowledge in its capacity as a member of various organizations, including the Biometrics Institute, the European Association for Biometrics, and ID2020.

Finally, the company renewed the importance of granting control of its biometrics technologies exclusively to certified partners.

“In order to make sure that Tech5 technologies are used to serve inclusion in all aspects of people’s lives […] we carefully select partners for the distribution of our technology components and intentionally invest in consent-based, high-quality data,” explains Tech5 CEO Machiel van der Harst.

AuthenticID partners with 1Kosmos to enhance digital ID applications worldwide

AuthenticID has announced a new, cross-product strategic biometrics partnership with 1Kosmos. As part of the collaboration, the companies will jointly offer a suite of digital identity proofing and authentication solutions for governments, corporations, and individuals.

“This partnership provides customers with integrated end-to-end identity verification and proofing on a global basis,” says 1Kosmos CEO Hemen Vimadalal.

According to the executive, the joint 1Kosmos and AuthenticID solution meets the major regulations and has received “every major market certification,” including FIDO Alliance, NIST 800–63–3 IAL-2/AAL-2, iBeta Biometric PAD-2 Liveness, GDPR, and SOC-2.

The new digital ID suite is aimed at accelerating customer onboarding, reducing costs associated with manual document reviews, and delivering a quick and convenient customer experience across a number of applications.

“Our combined products now allow us to support every identity use case for the physical, digital, blockchain, and metaverse ‘Web3.0’ economies and become the first identity platform to achieve both highest level certifications in the areas of proofing, verification and authentication of Digital Identity,” AuthenticID CEO Jeff Jani explains.

This will reportedly include blockchain for credential verification in order to keep a ‘privacy by design’ approach.

The partnership between AuthenticID and 1Kosmos comes days after the former reported a 186 percent year-on-year increase in annual revenue for 2021.

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Digital ID verification terminal patent filing from Global ID published in Europe

The European Patent Register has published an application from Global ID to protect intellectual property which could be used to develop digital ID verification products to use with its 3D finger vein biometrics.

The patent filing for a ‘method, electronic identity object, and terminal for recognizing and/or identifying a user’ describes a verification terminal connecting with a chip embedded in a digital identity storage object, and positively verifying a shared secret. An encrypted symmetric data link is then established for transmitting the digital ID data. The document goes on to describe both the need for identity credentials without biometrics to be unforgeable, and for those with biometric data to provide robust protection for its privacy.

The approval follows hot on the heels of the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office granting a U.S. patent for a ‘method and device for biometric vascular recognition and/or identification’ earlier in February. Global ID also received a patent from WIPO for the same invention now published in the European Patent Bulletin in October, 2020.

Clearview AI ponders broader facial recognition service

A federal court ruling on numerous dismissal motions presents a partial setback for Clearview AI in its defense against alleged violations of Illinois biometric data privacy law, as the company appears to be raising funds and considering expanding its business.

The company told investors in December that it could collect 100 billion face photos within a year, enough to identify nearly everyone in the world with face biometrics, according to a Washington Post report.

The pitch deck viewed by the Post suggested a possible expansion of Clearview AI’s business into gig economy or physical access control applications.

Clearview is seeking a $50 million Series C round from investors to upgrade its data collection, develop new products, expand its international sales team and lobby for favorable regulations, according to the report.

The presentation also suggests that Clearview is researching other biometric modalities, including gait recognition and contactless fingerprint capture.

CEO Hoan Ton-That told the Post that Clearview has collected its images “in a lawful manner,” and that the company is undecided on offering commercial services. If the company were to move in that direction, Ton-That says, it would inform the federal court hearing the suit against it under Illinois Biometric Information Privacy Act (BIPA).

An official with Meta said that Clearview has not provided information on whether data from Facebook, which bars “scraping” photos in its terms and conditions, is still held in company databases.

Clearview is also facing lawsuits in California, New York, Vermont and Virginia, as well as in other countries.

The company’s online principles pledge states that its facial recognition technology will only be sold to government agencies, and Ton-That says the principles will be updated if the use of the technology changes.

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Strong results for Neurotechnology’s face biometrics in NIST FRVT reports

Neurotechnology has announced that the company’s results in the recent U.S. National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) Face Recognition Vendor Test (FRVT) were a substantial improvement in biometric accuracy when compared to previous rounds.

Neurotechnology also said its algorithms showed a consistent increment of performance in both identification and verification testing scenarios.

More specifically, in FRVT 1:1 Verification evaluations, Neurotechnology’s algorithms scored among the top three percent out of 319 entries for both border control supervised (Visa Border, Border) and unsupervised (Kiosk) scenarios, referring to a January 13 update.

In terms of FRVT 1:N Identification evaluations, Neurotechnology’s face biometrics technology reached the top four percent matching frontal and profile mugshots scenarios among 341 submissions by 93 different providers.

Neurotechnology also claimed its algorithms showed the best results among all other submissions with the same template size.

“Consistency and dedication are crucial to our sustained R&D accomplishments,” comments Neurotechnology Biometric Research Lead Evaldas Borcovas.

According to the executive, the results in the NIST FRVT demonstrate the company’s dedication to building tools that are among the ‘top performing’ for some of the most common situations in civilian and law enforcement scenarios.

Thales launches aviation and biometrics research centers in Singapore

Multinational digital ID provider Thales has strengthened its partnership with the Singapore Economic Development Board (EDB) with the goal of deploying more cutting-edge biometrics, fintech and cloud aviation solutions in the country.

The renewed partnership will reportedly focus on two separate initiatives aimed at enhancing Singapore’s digital ID ecosystem.

“Singapore has been a key location for Thales’ digital transformation plans,” says EDB Executive Vice President Tan Kong Hwee. “This new decision to grow its tech innovation activities in emerging areas such as 5G, Biometrics and Cloud here is testament to Singapore’s strength as a tech ecosystem.”

The first of Thales’ new expansion projects is the establishment of an InFlyt Experience Cloud Centre of Excellence at the Thales Digital Factory in Singapore.

The move will see the company work on several inflight-focused entertainment digital services and technologies linked to the cloud, including site reliability expertise, security analysis, and other ‘push-to-cloud’ projects.

These technologies will be utilized to provide maintenance of aircraft systems but also to allow integration in onboard payment options or third-party solutions like gaming.

The second initiative announced by Thales in Singapore is the creation of a Digital Identity & Security Engineering Competence Centre (ECC) in the country.

The project will hire a team of 350 engineers working on advanced research, product development, and project delivery for customers worldwide.

As part of the collaboration with EDB, roughly 200 of these engineers will work on new digital innovation projects based on technologies related to 5G, fintech, and biometrics.

The latter category will include embedded artificial intelligence (AI) for enhanced biometric card authentication and using AI algorithms and machine learning for ID fraud prevention.

Scandit is now a unicorn with $150M funding to advance ID document scans, computer vision

Swiss startup Scandit has secured around US$150 million in Series D funding, valuing the firm at over $1 billion as it plans to continue developing its ID document scanning and other related technologies.

The oversubscribed funding round that was led by Warburg Pincus also saw the participation of existing Scandit shareholders such as Atomico, Forestay Capital, G2VP, GV, Kreos, NGP Capital, Schneider Electric, the Sony Innovation Fund and Swisscom Ventures.

The new funding will add to the company’s efforts in developing its data capture and scanning technology for digital ID documents using computer vision. Among its ambitions for future investments is to develop its autonomous data capture as well as bring in more talented workers to help advance the company’s international expansion plans, particularly in APAC.

The firm will pursue further developments with AI and ML for its computer vision software to be used in ever more settings such as robots, drones and wearables.

Scandit chief executive officer and co-founder Samuel Mueller comments, “By following our original vision of using the camera on smart devices to interact with physical items, we are transforming the daily lives of customers, employees and businesses to enable enhanced, personalized experiences and achieve their digital transformation ambitions.

“The new funding will allow us to help more businesses globally and to better empower an evolving mobile workforce, meet new customer expectations and deliver increasingly automated operations.”

Trust Stamp secures funding for QR code medical records with biometric security

Malta Enterprise has committed funding to support the development of Trust Stamp’s Medical-Record QR Code, which will implement the company’s Irreversibly Transformed Identity Token for secure biometric access control.

The amount of support committed was not disclosed in the announcement.

Trust Stamp unveiled its biometrics-backed Medical-Record QR Code when it was entered in the Hague Innovators Challenge 2021.

“Existing certificate programs have been designed and implemented in reaction to the immediate and unprecedented needs created by the pandemic,” explains Trust Stamp Malta Chief Executive Officer Josh Allen. “This project is directed to the development of a next-generation digital health certificate that will complement all existing and future certificates and extend their functionality while placing the individual in control of their data.”

The company recently received approval for a U.S. patent on its passive biometric liveness detection for IT2 tokens.

SenseTime to aid automakers with AI

A report by the South China Morning Post says that AI and facial recognition firm SenseTime is expanding into the auto manufacturing industry by providing an AI platform that assists workers through detecting flaws in engine components.

The company says it launched an AI-powered engine defect detection system with its proprietary industrial quality inspection training platform named SenseSpring for use by Beijing Foton Cummins Engine. The automated system uncovers surface and assembly defects in key engine components, which frees human workers from devoting time to tedious inspection work, SenseTime claims.

SenseTime joins other Chinese technology companies that are taking steps into the Chinese auto industry. Huawei and Baidu joined the country’s $19 billion electric car boom, while Alibaba seeks to grow into the automated driving field along with its electric vehicle ambitions. The Morning Post says China’s industry inspection market reached $142 million in 2020, driven by Baidu, Huawei, Alibaba, and AInnovation.

Hyundai’s Genesis recognized by Canadian auto media for biometric features

The Automobile Journalists Association of Canada (AJAC) awarded Hyundai’s Genesis with accolades for technical innovation and safety innovation for its in-vehicle fingerprint biometrics reader and radar-based rear occupant alert.

Genesis says the radar-based rear occupant alert detects motion in the rear seat and cargo area, which differentiates it from other similar features that only sense weight. It claims to be sensitive enough to detect a sleeping child’s chest moving as they breathe, and will raise an alarm if a person is left behind in the vehicle through audio and visual alerts.

Its in-vehicle fingerprint reader registers a driver through a biometric scan on a multimedia screen that can set a profile that remembers features and preferences. Genesis lists vehicle settings that are remembered like mirrors and seat position; head-up-display position and preferences; radio/audio presets; Bluetooth data; and climate control and vehicle settings.

The automaker says the fingerprint scanner “marks the start of in-vehicle, biometric technology,” with future opportunities to expand the technology’s capabilities and functions.

Lawrence Hamilton, executive director for Genesis Motors Canada says about the recognition, “We are honored to accept these awards from AJAC, and grateful to the judging panel for their time to conduct comprehensive assessment and analysis of these advanced safety and convenience features.”

Global automobile association sees future for biometrics in cameras and radar inside and outside a vehicle

Though cameras and radars are considered a placeholder for more advanced technologies like lidar in the advanced driver assist systems (ADAS) field, industry experts quoted by the SAE say that their applications are far from complete, with potential for further biometrics inclusion.

Lidar, a technology that emits lasers that are measured for their time to return to the sensor to form a 3D image, is viewed as the future for ADAS according to some in the auto industry. But figures cited by SAE say that improvements in cameras and radar can keep up with the field.

“I think the majority of the industry is looking at lidar as it brings something to the party that’s unique, but we’re now seeing sensors that are starting to compete with each other for the same space. When we had standard-resolution radar and lower-resolution cameras, then lidar was the high-resolution solution everybody saw on the horizon. Those three sensors were seen to work cooperatively,” says Phil Amsrud, a senior principal analyst at IHS Markit.

For automated driving, Amsrud says cameras inside the vehicle can monitor biometric features like head movements and pupil dilation to ensure that the driver is paying enough attention to take control if needed. He stressed the importance of improving camera performance to adapt to changing light contrasts in situations like emerging from a dark tunnel into a well-lit area.

NIST updates federal government IDV options for remote digital identity

NIST is increasing the types of credentials that the U.S. federal government will accept from employees and contractors to include a digital identity for remote processes. It is the first update of the rules since 2013.

The National Institute of Standards and Technology has been looking at ways to expand beyond personal ID verification or PIV card.

The PIV card remains in place, but it is an inadequate tool when so many people working for the government use mobile devices and log into cloud apps that do not use public-key infrastructure.

Now agency officials can opt for multifactor authentication with Fast ID Online (FIDO) tokens and one-time passwords. The newly acceptable ID-verification tools have been listed in NIST SP 800–63–3. Further NIST publications on topics associated with the new FIPS 201–3, like federated digital identity, are planned for the months ahead.

The updated PIV specification document addresses the use of biometrics in background investigations, the issuance of PIV cards (which include face and fingerprint biometrics, with an option for iris biometrics), and comparisons against databases maintained by the FBI.

Microsoft customers need to step-up authentication, says Microsoft

With cyberattacks on computers becoming less attractive (due to better defenses), criminals are more interested in attacks on identities.

That is according to Microsoft, which has long suffered reputational damage from exploits. The company recorded more than $10 billion in security revenue in 2020 and has funneled a bit of that largess into a new quarterly marketing publication, called Cyber Signals.

Cyber Signals will share observations from the company’s research and security teams about threat trends, with the inaugural issue focusing on digital identity as an attack vector.

In announcing the e-collateral, Microsoft’s corporate vice president of security and identity, Vasu Jakkal said his customers can do better.

According to Jakkal, 22 percent of those using Azure Active Directory did so with strong identity authentication as of December.

A blog sharing research from Beyond Identity, meanwhile, indicates that lax security practices extend even after employment in many cases. More than four in five survey respondents have accessed accounts from an employer they are no longer with, and many used that continued access to harm their former employer.

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Biometric surveillance vendors adopt the app store model

App stores for edge surveillance cameras are growing with biometrics and computer vision products benign and otherwise. This is significant because robust third-party software development for a company’s hardware is a good indicator of business potential.

Microsoft’s Windows OS remains the template of growth through others’ work, but Apple and Google also have succeeded by inviting other developers too, in their case, fill out their respective mobile-app stores with attractive and innovative code.

Hikvision’s own store, part of its Embedded Open Program, boasts 128 third-party applications, one of the stronger showings in biometrics-heavy edge surveillance cameras.

Apps include AI-FIRE, which is capable of deep neural network video analysis of large environments, indoors and outdoors, where flame and smoke detectors are less effective at spotting trouble. The software was developed by A.I. Tech.

Automatic Number Plate Recognition, by surveillance software writer Milestone, enables operators to search license plates and vehicle color in real-time and recorded.

La Chouette, a French maker of autonomous surveillance cameras, also has put its software on Hikvision systems, in this case, to spot “anti-social” and illegal activities in urban and rural areas.

Another third-party app comes from URFog, which will release blinding fog when suspicious activity is picked up by Hikvision cameras.

Competing with Hikvision is app store Azena, a small unit within German multinational manufacturer Bosch, which is a large maker of surveillance cameras. Azena reportedly hosts more than 100 surveillance applications for sale to anyone looking to increase camera-network capabilities. They include facial recognition, behavior detection and other video analytics.

DeepSolutions, for example, sells its Deep Crowd application for counting people in multiple “control zones.” Another, related piece of code available on Azena is the Crowd Gathering Safety Alarm by C-Link Technology.

A.I. Tech, which works with Hikvision, also has developed its AI Bio for the Azena site. The app records biometrics in an attempt to determine ethnicity, emotion, age and gender.

Dahua has its own app marketplace which seems to host 18 applications sorted by categories including tripwire, flow management, people counting and others.

One software vendor, Intuvision, makes an industrial-park tripwire application, intuVision Edge, for Dahua systems. The app can judge crowd density, spot objects left behind, detect intrusions and other signals.