Biometrics Integrations Look to the Future of Account Access, Money, and Digital ID

By Chris Burt

Biometrics and digital identity document contracts continue to generate millions for companies like IBM, Augentic and IN Groupe in major news items on Biometric Update this week. Many of the most widely read stories involved updates to integrate innovative technologies. Worldcoin’s crypto is out and drawing strong reactions, passkeys were launched by 1Password and Microsoft, and NIST is adding a section to its digital ID guidance to incorporate new credentials.

Top biometrics news of the week

IBM has won a major contract worth $84.4 million with the UK government to help build a platform for immigration and law enforcement authorities to match fingerprint and face biometrics. The tender is part of a Home Office program expected to cost $1.7 billion. IBM’s role will include bringing together biometric data from the immigration and asylum, passport, settlement and other databases.

A contract has been won by Augentic and IN Groupe to produce identity documents for Kosovo. The deal also includes identity management system and IT infrastructure upgrades, and is worth around $13.5 million. Meanwhile local reports suggest previous ID document supplier Veridos has been accused of customs evasion, but the company tells Biometric Update the matter boils down to a simple declaration error made by a subcontractor.

The drumbeat of passkey rollouts continues. 1Password has launched a private beta test for iOS and iPadOS allowing people to access accounts with biometrics instead of passwords. Microsoft has built passkeys into Hello for Business on Windows 11 for passwordless access by enterprise customers.

Ghana is integrating its birth registration and digital ID systems to issue both for newborns at the same time. Parents will be given Ghana Cards for their babies, who are expected to enroll their biometrics to update the IDs when they reach 18 years old, through the integration of national health and civil registration databases.

The crypto long associated with Worldcoin is being distributed, with 25 tokens (worth about 36 cents, altogether as of mid-Friday) for every person registering their iris biometrics to create a verified World ID. Some privacy advocates have attacked the company, but it says they are mischaracterizing how it works and what data is collected.

Hikvision is being accused of persisting in selling its software and cameras for ethnic minority-detection surveillance to local government authorities in China. The deployment allegedly uses Nvidia chips, though the semiconductor maker says it did not sell them in the country or for that purpose.

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NIST has been engaging with the international digital identity and cybersecurity communities to update them on version two of its cybersecurity framework. Meetings have taken place with officials from the EU, Mexico and other countries throughout the first half of the year.

NIST is also in the process of updating its Digital Identity Guidelines, a process which reached the point of holding an event this week to present the changes being considered. Those changes include a new section covering innovations influencing digital ID, like Verifiable Credentials and mDLs. Watch for further coverage of the changes and this event in the week ahead.

OIX has announced OpenID Chair Nat Sakimura and Future Laboratory Strategy Director Louise French as keynote speakers for #IdentityTrust2023. Also presenting is a speaker from the UK Department of Science, Innovation and Technology.

“Digital ID is fast becoming the primary route to accessing public and private sector services across the globe,” OIX Chief Identity Strategist Nick Mothershaw points out. His goal is for the event to help organizations accept digital ID with confidence.

A feature interview with MOSIP’s Sanjith Sundaram and Nagarajan Santhanam explores the organization’s partner ecosystem and how it fits within the organization’s philosophy, and the overall digital ID for all movement. The platform is built and lessons from real-world implementations are rolling in. The ecosystem is maturing and engagement with MOSIP’s next region has already begun.

HID Global is part of MOSIP’s partner ecosystem, and trumpets the confirmed compliance of its tenprint fingerprint scanners in a recent announcement.

Onfido is now providing DocuSign with liveness detection with video selfie biometrics, and IDScan.net has signed up a mobile banking as a customer, while Microsoft is attempting to push further into the face biometrics onboarding market.

A corruption scandal has erupted in Thailand over a contract for airport biometrics. Several senior officials including a former national police chief are alleged to have extended a deadline improperly, and possibly even attempted to assassinate another official who tried to intervene.

An analysis of the metaverse’s hypothetical social implications is provided in a white paper from the WEF and Accenture, as the business world attempts to comes to grips with a concept seen by some as tremendously disruptive. Will deliver provide ID to those without? Increase biometric surveillance? Improve KYC? Don’t hold your breath.

Please let us know about any podcasts, editorials or other content we should be aware of and share with the people in biometrics and the digital identity community, either in the comments below or through social media.

Source: Biometric Update

Chris Burt is managing editor and industry analyst at Biometric Update. He has also written nonfiction about information technology, dramatic arts, sports culture, and fantasy basketball, as well as fiction about a doomed astronaut. He lives in Toronto. You can follow him on Twitter @AFakeChrisBurt.

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