Melissa: Time for the public sector to verify identity remotely

Improving technology, combined with the pandemic, has been driving the digitalisation of the public sector, with many placing services online.

At the same time fraud has been increasing, exacerbated by services quickly heading online during the health crisis. The Cabinet Office estimates that fraud and error costs the public purse up to £51.8 billion every year, with the Bounce Back Loan Scheme set up during the pandemic alone expected to cost the taxpayer £27 billion in fraud or credit losses.

It’s only by confirming identity, and knowing who they are engaging with, that public bodies are able to effectively spend and protect valuable budgets. This increasingly requires identity to be successfully verified remotely. 

Also, today people are used to engaging with businesses which provide fast and secure access to services online. They expect the same quick and seamless approach when they register online for a service offered by the public sector.

This makes it essential that public bodies ensure accurate identity verification at the point of access - ideally in real time.

Biometric technology

A good place to start to verify identity remotely is to use biometric technology. It enables organisations to digitally identify someone using their physical human characteristics, such as facial features, fingerprints, and voice; or behavioural characteristics, such as how they interact with a touchscreen. These are unique identifiers that cannot, in theory, be replicated, avoiding the need for time-consuming security questions or the frustration of forgotten passwords.

Biometrics enables people to quickly and easily access their services or account, ensuring a positive experience. It’s already technology that’s proving popular in seamlessly confirming the ID of prospective customers in other heavily regulated industries, such as financial services.

Biometrics that uses facial verification technology is the standout tool for those in the public sector. With this form of biometrics, once the applicant to a service or product has scanned and provided their primary ID document (such as a passport or driver's licence with a photo), via a device of their choice, Machine Readable Zone (MRZ) and Optical Character Recognition (OCR) technology can check its validity in real time. The applicant then simply takes a selfie, which the software scrutinises via an algorithm within the technology, comparing it with the master ID image. The algorithm can instantly distinguish differences between the selfie and the ID image, including hairstyle, head position, facial hair, skin imperfections, makeup and age.

Liveness checks are essential

There has been an increase in ‘spoofing’ which involves criminals using creative methods, like 2D images and video playback, to try to trick facial recognition technology and ‘prove’ they are the person they are impersonating. To prevent this it’s vital that those in the public sector select facial verification technology that offers liveness checks, and requests a ‘challenge response’. By asking the individual to blink, which confirms eye movement and proof of life, it’s possible to establish that the person is real and not a static image. It provides additional confidence that the person being onboarded online is very definitely who they say they are.

Avoid manual checks with biometrics

The physical, time consuming, and more costly checks that traditionally used to take place behind the scenes at public bodies can now be avoided using automated biometric technology to verify identity remotely.

There are various issues with manual checks. Firstly, staff are asked to review documents for authenticity, despite not always having specific training in identifying forged or fraudulent documents. Secondly, employees can’t be expected to know the thousands of ID document types worldwide, which can cause review-related delays. Thirdly, it’s important to realise that everyone is vulnerable to human error, making manual checks less effective or stringent than they should be. Finally, operating manually does not usually allow for a quick response to changes, whether legislative or regulatory.

With this in mind, public bodies must ask themselves if there is any justification for continuing spending money on manual ID checks with budgets under extreme pressure, when speed and accuracy are offered via automated remote ID verification services, such as biometrics?

As public sector services increasingly go online delivering a frictionless and secure remote onboarding process, with effective identity verification at its heart, is critical. This requires them to use biometric technology that powers facial verification – ideally one that offers liveness checks.

This guest blog was written by Barley Laing, UK Managing Director at Melissa. To learn more about Melissa, please visit their LinkedIN and Twitter page.