How to Secure Passports, ID cards and Driving Licences....
- Rajesh Soundararajan
- May 12, 2020
- 4 min read
....a simple solution goes a long way
How to Secure Passports, ID cards and Driving Licences
When the Evening Standard published an article on how an Eastern European crime gang ran an Amazon-style’ fake passport agency’, it was not an isolated case. The forgery factory in Stratford had built a capability to produce tens of thousands of bogus documents simultaneously, and the gang offered custom-made paperwork to online clients
When the operation was busted, the National Crime Agency officers seized thousands of identity documents, skills certificates and enough material to produce tens of thousands of bank cards. Though a majority of their customers were from eastern Europe, this is a global phenomenon.
In our earlier posts on Bulgarian Passport Scam and Fake Driving Licences , we had written about specific instances of such a crime in other parts of the world as well. Identity fraud using fake or tampered documents is a very lucrative market and precisely why secure encrypted document security solutions work best and are sorely needed for creating and validating tamper-proof documents like passports, ID cards and driving licenses.
Why is ID Fraud such a menace, and how can it be stopped?
Any government-issued ID should be tamper-proof. The uniformed law enforcement officer or anyone else including the general public should have a secure mechanism to validate the credentials without compromising the privacy.
It is also vital that all documents that form a system of ID proof are tightly controlled and issued. This is important because fake low-level IDs are usually used to obtain genuine high-level IDs. For example, consider the case of using a driving license to apply for a passport. And thus the entire chain of documents needs to be made tamper-proof.
The sophisticated software, scanners and printers of today allow for the creation of any fake ID that can be produced in any part of the world. The physical security features like watermarks, holograms etc. work only for the people who keep abreast with the changes and the current feature of the documents (e.g. difficult for third parties to know that your documents from 2018 use a specific hologram and in 2020 your organisation switched to another hologram) and so on
How can secure QR code solutions help prevent tampering of documents?
With secure QR code solutions, the issuing organisation generates a unique tamper-proof secure QR Code for each ID card/ passport/ document. This encrypted code carries all the key details of the ID including the photograph.
Third parties use a dedicated app to simply scan and verify the ID details on demand.
If the ID card has to be revoked before the expiry date, then the same can be done at the back end and the QR code is updated to reflect the current status.
Secure encrypted QR code is one of the most mature and proven methods to ensure the integrity of ID cards and other such documents end-end. These documents are generated securely only by the authorised issuer and can be instantly validated and verified by a third party without database access and with full privacy.
The image below shows how this can be done.
Example : Secure QR Code for Passport
Benefits of Secure QR document security solutions -
Easy integration with existing ID Card Production System
Complete Card life-cycle management including revocation
Easy to validate: simply scan the Qryptal QR Code
All-round security & privacy: validation with digital signature verification is performed by App on device
Sign up for a free trial by clicking on the button on top right corner of this webpage.
You may also like
What Bulgarian Passport Scam Teaches Other Governments about …
Secure QR Codes for Driving Licenses, Passports and Identity Cards
Why are Immigration Authorities not proactive in preventing fraud?
‘Digital Vaccine Certificates or Immunity Passports’ - How to make them tamperproof and …
