Will digital identity be for 2020 what customer experience was for 2019?
Multiple Finovate Best of Show winner iProov announced today that it has teamed up with Singaporean digital government transformation company Toppan Ecquaria to enable four million Singaporeans to securely access government services online.
“This pioneering service enables citizens to live in a world of trust online,” iProov founder and CEO Andrew Bud said. “By iProoving themselves, the people of Singapore can have even greater confidence in their safety, privacy, and security on the Internet.”
The partnership will enable users of SingPass, the country’s national digital identity system, to use facial verification to authenticate themselves in order to access government services, including filing and completing tax returns. Part of GovTech of Singapore’s National Digital Identity (NDI) program, SingPass is used by Singaporeans to securely access more than 150 digital services and 180+ government agencies and businesses.
“This marks a tipping point for facial verification,” Budd added. “The technology has advanced so much in recent years that it can now provide the highest levels of reliable security for the authentication of a national digital identity program.” In a statement, the company noted that the implementation represented the first time that a cloud-based facial verification technology has secured a national digital identity network.
Leveraging the camera on a mobile device, computer, or kiosk, iProov’s Genuine Presence Assurance technology scans the user’s face, while the screen simultaneously illuminates with a cryptographic sequence of colors for a few seconds. This provides confirmation not only that the user is the rightful owner of the national identity number presented, but also that the user is a real person rather than a photograph or mask, and that they are present right now rather than being a deepfake or video.
Unlike facial recognition, to which facial verification is often compared, the technology used by iProov requires the knowledge and assent of the user. As such, it does not have the social stigma some attach to other biometric technologies that focus on the face. iProov’s solution is easy to use – with or without a mobile device – and supports inclusivity by being effective with older Singaporeans with limited mobility and access to technology.
Founded in 2011 and headquartered in London, U.K., iProov demonstrated its technology most recently at FinovateEurope in Berlin earlier this year. The company’s partnership news comes only weeks after launching its threat intelligence system for biometric assurance, the iProov Security Operations Centre (iSOC).