Stolen identities and subsequent crimes like money laundering and terrorist financing are an increasing concern for digital platforms of today’s businesses. Although there are always newer, improved systems for automation and digitizations, the risk of fraud is still present. This is partly due to the sophisticated methods of criminals, and also the negligence of businesses in terms of security systems.
Identity theft, hacking, and gaining unauthorized access are nothing new, but now data is becoming more vulnerable. This is because it’s easier for criminals to achieve their illicit motives with the help of improved technology. The rate of adoption of digital platforms by businesses is increasing, but when it comes to privacy and security, the story is different. Document verification solutions are now providing the necessary countermeasure for fraud prevention in businesses.
Identity Fraud
The Covid-19 pandemic has forced the implementation of social distancing and other measures for saving lives like asking employees to work from home. It’s safe to say that global governments have been mostly successful in preventing the spread of the coronavirus, but businesses still face increased threats from fraudsters in online spaces.
Criminals take the work-from-home implication as an advantage and get unauthorized access to sensitive business information using fake identity documents. It’s therefore becoming important for businesses to implement document verification solutions and prevent identity theft.
With criminals targeting the loopholes such as insufficient verification security measures, it’s easier for them to manipulate and overcome the digital systems. However, when businesses incorporate document verification solutions, the risks of identity theft and other such criminal activity can be mitigated.
The top management of companies and the trusted employees who are given key responsibilities such as hiring new individuals need to be vigilant. This is because meetings and interviews are conducted online without document verification solutions, and it’s easy to fake someone’s identity on online platforms.
The attendees of an onboarding meeting may as well include criminals with the intention to cause harm. Negligence in preventing these risks can cause huge losses for the company.
Types of Documents Used for Identity Theft
- Illegal Documents
Fraudsters often create illegal documents by stealing information from others’ identity documents. However, illegal documents do not comprise key characteristics that are supposed to be present in real identity documents.
Tampered Documents
Another possibility of unauthorized authentication is with the use of tampered documents, which are modified documents belonging to someone else.
Stolen Documents
Stolen documents are commonly used by criminals to avoid getting caught. This is because all the information is someone else’s.
Document Verification Services
Document verification solutions are offered to businesses to help them add a countermeasure for identity fraud using illegal/fake documents. As document frauds often lead to money laundering and terrorist financing crimes, global authorities also encourage businesses to implement document verification solutions.
Moreover, businesses that save their working costs by conducting operations without sufficient security measures often end up having to pay hefty penalties. This is because they lose money by becoming victims of identity fraud due to the lack of security measures.
How Document Verification Solutions Work
Document verification solutions can be easily incorporated within digital business systems by installing the respective APIs from the service providers. The end-users are supposed to enter the required information such as the name and date of birth through the mobile or web application. Also, they are required to upload scanned photos of their identity documents.
AI-based document verification solutions then automatically detect and eliminate suspicious alterations to the documents. The slightest changes in characteristics can also be captured and analyzed for authentication. The accuracy is provided due to the integration of machine learning algorithms.
Online Document Authentication
Manually carrying out document verification required hiring trained personnel that just checked the document by looking at them. This was obviously not a comprehensive way to verify documents because there are often minor alterations that cannot be caught by the human eye. Now, document verification solutions provide detailed analysis including the detection of holograms, rainbow patterns, the use of special ink, as well as the authentication of the MRZ (machine readable zone) code.
Although the process is complex and requires various algorithms in the backend, it’s just a matter of minutes for the customers. Machine learning algorithms combined with deep learning allow the verification of new, unique, and varying document templates with ease. AI is capable of self-learning and additional data is fed constantly to further improve the processing power and accuracy.
Final Thoughts
In summary, document verification services provide the much-needed security check to digital platforms. Integrating AI and various other technologies make this process reliable and add convenience for an improved customer experience while avoiding identity theft at the same time.
Equipped with a Bachelor of Information Technology (BIT) degree, Lucas Noah stands out in the digital content creation landscape. His current roles at Creative Outrank LLC and Oceana Express LLC showcase his ability to turn complex technology topics into engagin... Read more