How to Verify Individual Identity in the Digital Market?

For the majority of the people, the subject of identity verification is something that doesn’t come up in daily conversations, till you are directly involved in the identity access and management in your research, work, or both. But, it is quite understandable that identity verification might not be on your radar.

As we continuously hear and read of the rising number of high-profile data violations/breaches faced by major companies, the time has come to include identity verification as a part of everyday conversation. Google domains and hosting has long-since required domain owners and web hosting customers to verify their identity, so it makes sense for advertisers to follow suit.

The rise in the frequency and sophistication of fraud attempts against online businesses has further increased the importance of identity verification. “Last year, we saw a 37% increase in phishing attempts made against leading Australian web hosting providers,” said Nathan Finch, CTO of Aussie Web Hosting. Finch’s experience is echoed by many other business owners around the world.

With hundreds and thousands of identity documents being used worldwide, and with no mutual standards in place, establishing and verifying the identities has become a robust task and requires an excellent time. Moreover, the advent of digital and mobile usage has increased the difficulty in ascertaining identity and matching the ID of the person holding the device.

It is reported that because of ignoring the identity verification process, financial terrorism and identity theft have become quite famous leading to more investment in the data security and identity verification industry.

Forming identities in today’s age is a must to do-thing because hackers are present everywhere and are always looking for new ways to pass the security testing. There is no perfect solution to secure customers and institutions from sophisticated attackers, data breaches, and hackers.

However, as identity has become an essential currency for customers, the need to safeguard and protect digital integrity against bad actors has become imperative. One such way is to secure your online accounts by using strong password generators, as they help create “unhackable” passwords and secure your identity to a greater extent.

To further aid our readers in this regard, we’ve compiled this article for them that will surely let them know how to establish digital identity in the market. But, before getting into the main topic, we’ll first discuss the importance of identity verification.

Importance of Identity Verification

In a world, where evidence of identity has become necessary for accessing goods and services when criminals have access to our identity credentials, the results can be shocking.

With shreds of sensitive personal information, hackers can suddenly take up your identity, ruin your credit card history and reputation by fraudulent credit card transactions, loans, and or foreign currency (Fx) trading as a means to move the money overseas. With this, you might be left with the difficult task of re-establishing your credit rating by going through several hoops with credit bureaus to prove that someone else was behind the unsolicited transactions.

As per the Javelin Strategy and Research study of 2018, 16.7 million of the US consumers have been a victim of identity theft with an average loss of $16.8 million in 2017. To secure their citizens from financial frauds, governments from across the world have already placed strict AML compliance laws. In 2019, FLs were charged for almost $1.1 billion by the regulatory bodies after failing to fulfill the regulations.

Reuter’s survey reported, on an average, FIs spends approximately $500 million for identification verification and compliance that might include operation, training, and management of a separate compliance team.

A reliable identity verification infrastructure is needed to go hand-in-hand with sufficient validation that can only be possible by the collaboration of data management sources including both private and public. Secondly, authentication needs to play a crucial role in keeping the information secure while reducing the chances of misuse if any leak takes place. With all this, it is essential to establish a digital identity in the market.

How to Verify Your Digital Identity?

In today’s age, an individual’s identity is confined to the physical document. It has become a requirement to run an in-depth background verification with data points to assess possible risks with the associated entity.

To establish a customer’s identity, there are five methods or types of identity verification processes. Read the remaining part and get the residual knowledge too.

1.     Electronic ID Verification (e-IDV)

It provides an increased level of assurance to identity with accessibility to cost-effective electronic devices and systems. The consumer has to be digitally and remotely available in the presence of a live representative to prove their identity. The digital documents are analyzed and searched against different public and personal databases for a match of unique character and provide a level of assurance to an individual’s real-world identity for due assiduousness.

2.     Mobile ID Verification (M-ID)

Undoubtedly, mobile devices have altered our lifestyle and have become an essential part of a person’s identity in several ways. The mobile ID verification is similar to e-IDV, but mobile network operators can easily give away information such as name, address, device information, geographical location, and transactional data for verification.

There are companies like CongreSs who are developing experimental techniques to make this type of verification much more convenient and secure. The users can scan their documents in real-time and later, this information can be used to verify identity across databases. The mobile devices also provide another authentication factor along with a fingerprint scanner which is popular among the people.

3.     Document Verification

Document verification has been handled through manual document verification, but AI and automation services have altered the FMI perspective and approach in recent times. Now, users are required to give their KYC documents based on the level of risk assessment and assurance needed to verify identity. The required PII documents might also depend on the identity features like DOB, full name, address, and unique code of government attested documents.

The personal documents are analyzed by the AI-powered deep search engines across different private, public databases. After finding a match of identity, a risk score is attested with the level of identity assurance to integrity.

4.     Video Identification

With the introduction of AI, facial recognition technology has been implemented to assess, monitor, and identify customers. Every identity is unique and like biometric fingerprints, your facial features are unique. To prove identity, the customer is asked to upload their real-time photos and facial mapping data by a webcam or front camera from their mobile device.

The data is then kept, analyzed, and searched on the various AML/CFT databases, private and public video feeds, and photographic documents for a match of a person’s identity.  For enhanced due diligence, VI services need random gesture-based facial and speech recognition methods, by determining these data points and detecting if it is a real-world person or someone pretending to bypass the system. For an immersive experience, along with an additional layer of security, services are used with multi-factor authentication for increased due diligence and risk assurance factor.

5.     Multi-Factor Authentication

A customer’s personal information can be used to authenticate an identity. KBA, an element of MFA, can offer a quick customer onboarding experience. But, KBA does not provide enhanced security and can easily be duped, leading to a security breach, data theft, identity fraud, and loss of individual account access.

An additional layer for security protocols is needed to encounter this threat that can be managed by MFA. The extra layer comes at the cost of infrastructure, increased period, and risk level assurance performed to confirm an identity. The users are asked to verify their identity using MFA like biometric, cryptographically encrypted soft-tokens, OTP, password, and hardware security keys. With this advanced layer of security, MFA is the best authentication option with ID methods.

Final Thoughts

By now, you’ll have understood the importance of identity verification. It is not a one-size-fits-all solution. Some solutions provide a level of certainty for every level of risk. It is up to institutions to decide the amount of security they’re offering and up to consumers to determine how much friction they can bear.