Our world has become the proverbial global village in the digital age. Personal, consumer and business transactions reach across the internet through countries and continents alike.
These exchanges are happening in real time and with little or no face-to-face contact. And we expect our online communications to be fast and easy but most important secure.
We need procedures and solutions that provide comprehensive security and identity verification. We need checks to build trust and protect us from data breaches, hackers and cybercriminals.
A group of smaller companies, startups all, have recognized this need and are selling new identity verification solutions that blend data and electronic credentials. They include companies like IdenfyOpens a new window , which sells AI and ML solutions and Electronic Verification SystemsOpens a new window , which verifies documents, phone number owners and other data.
Third party verification
A startup called PersonaOpens a new window which sells what it calls a “reliable intermediary†software solution to verify personal information on the internet, is one such example.
The startup’s pitch is that a third party must come into play to verify personal information – much like PayPal became a trusted link between merchants and buyersOpens a new window in handling payments.
Sharing a lot of personal information is unnecessary, Persona adds, not to mention risky for the businesses that must then store all that information somewhereOpens a new window afterwards, a target just waiting for hackers.
Persona’s solution is what it calls an “identity verification platform†or IDV, which allows a business to securely verify an individual’s identity in less than 10 lines of code via an API that can be plugged into their own website.
Fighting synthetic ID fraud
Its software platform can verify identities across a range of scenarios, from checks on social platforms, to facilitating trust between couriers and consumers and even enabling keyless entry into rental properties.
The platform employs artificial intelligence technology and facial recognition techniques to fight synthetic identity fraudOpens a new window , one of the fastest growing crimes in the country, and deepfakesOpens a new window .
It uses database lookups, reverse phone lookups, document verification, government ID verification and biometric options like uploading a selfie, and live video captureOpens a new window to produce a facial similarity score.
But Persona’s engineers note that such a range of techniques do not represent a silver bullet.
One of the platform’s sales pitches for large corporate customers is that it eliminates the liability of storing too much user information collected for legitimate purposes, which becomes a data pool waiting to be hacked.
This is especially relevant in the age of data protection forced on companies by California’s Consumer Privacy Act and the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation. Such laws require corporations to protect data from digital outlaws that acquire and resell personal data to anyone, anywhere with the money to buy it.
Building confidence
Persona says it allows its clients to see just enough data to operate their business but not all of it. This builds client confidence that the data is fully verified, the company says.
“We believe that eliminating humans from the review process is the only way to verify identities in a secure and scalable way,†says chief executive Rick Song, a software engineer.
Song’s company counts clients in 192 countries. But the field is filling with competitors including Trulioo, IDnow, Truework and Incode.
Together, the sector’s market is expanding rapidly. Research from Statista forecasts it will be worth more than $18 billion by 2027, up from $5.5 billion in 2018.
Such anticipated growth signals that investors believe these firms are meeting demands to trust but verify.