Protect Your Identity

Document verification, as well as other security measures, is key to guaranteeing the security of trade transactions and reducing the fraud derived from forgery and phishing.

The Scope of Your Internet Tracks

We are not fully aware of the great amount of personal data we input into the Web. We do not know either that it may remain there for several years, at the mercy of any hacker. It does not matter what site we visit; in order to make any transaction, contract a service or just request information, we must introduce sensitive data that makes it very easy to identify and locate us. We take it for granted. The Internet works like that.

Having said this, we must take some precautions to protect our identity on the Internet. It is not that there have never been identity thieves before. Unfortunately, there have always been unscrupulous people who have managed to appropriate personal data by means of deception or other unlawful means (for instance, by stealing mail from mail boxes). The only difference is that now they have access to much more information than before and they just have to look for it in one place: the Web. This allows them to deceive many more people and exponentially increase the profitability of their operations.

How to Avoid Identity Theft

Identity theft comprises any kind of fraud that leads to the loss of sensitive personal data, e.g. passwords, user names, banking data or credit card numbers. It is what has been called phishing in the online jargon. In order to avoid it, we can take relatively simple measures: make sure the site we are visiting has a privacy policy in place, use complex passwords, do not share them with anybody and particularly when they are requested through suspicious e-mails, check the URL of the sites we are visiting, take care of our equipment, update our software, and avoid using public computers as much as possible.However, all these measures sometimes turn out to be insufficient. That is why new companies have emerged that develop solutions aimed at guaranteeing the security of both our most precious documents and our identity. The first group includes document software firms, which safeguard the security and integrity of the most important documents of companies and their employees. Their solutions make it possible to control and restrict access to documents, monitor them, authenticate user identity and, in general, improve companies’ credibility towards customers.

The second group is made up of a handful of companies, usually start-ups, which have especially focused on protecting firms against phishing-related fraud. Their solutions help capture personal data quickly and safely from any identity document by taking a picture. The system returns the personal data included in the relevant document, enables a formal identification, prevents cyber fraud, and speeds up customer registration processes. All these factors are extremely important for e-commerce firms, social media and providers of means of payment. Within the same line of business, they also offer automatic visitor access registration and control systems that allow extracting the information from the visitor’s identity card by scanning it, and completing the file automatically upon accessing the company’s premises. This is especially useful for firms or governmental bodies that must comply with strict security rules as far as employee access is concerned due to the nature of their operations.

Document Verification to Guarantee Security

Document verification is also one of the cornerstones of this business. The solutions in this area make it possible to assess the authenticity of identity documents, something essential in order to guarantee the security of trade transactions and reduce the fraud derived from forgery and phishing.

But maybe the flagship product (or at least the most attractive) are the latest biometric solutions, which help identify customers in a 100% precise manner through unique profiles based on biometric markers. That is to say, they allow validating the identity of the identity card’s holder from their fingerprint and determining the authenticity or falseness of said document. In other words, they help determine whether it legitimately belongs to the holder. Both this line of business as well as the previous one are particularly addressed to the banking industry, telecommunications companies and governments.

These companies also render services related to information and asset protection against Internet threats and cyber crimes. They have security operations centers that provide advice on regulatory compliance in this field, conduct cyber security research and plans, offer proprietary and third-party tools related to cyber security and cyber defense, monitor potential threats in order to minimize their impact, detect possible threats and undertake measures to counteract them, and take any steps necessary in case of cyber incident. Likewise, they have experts in IT security who detect vulnerabilities in client companies’ IT systems and, in general terms, in those assets that are exposed to the public as a result of their connection to the Internet. From that starting point, they conduct an audit and implement corrective measures. They somehow act as ‘ethical hackers’.

All these services and solutions enable client companies to acquire customers, who feel safe when operating on the Web.

Although it is true that much progress has been made in terms of data protection, acts have been enacted in this respect and ISO standards have been established to ensure the security of our personal data, we should not lower our guard. We must keep on focusing on research, development and innovation to stand up to hackers and protect our identity on a medium, the Internet, that will end up being ubiquitous and will take the place (let’s hope it is for good) of the real world in many aspects.

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