INTERNATIONAL SEMINAR FOR SAFE IDENTIFICATION
The Chilean company Vigatec organized,
along with its associate Entrust Datacard, a two-day international seminar to
explain technological novelties, global trends, methodologies and new design
and printing practices to manufacture more secure identification documents.
Santiago, October 2018. – The State has the
responsibility of providing citizens with identification documents that reflect
their identity, name, picture, fingerprint, and other individual attributes
that almost never change. However, it’s not just about supplying them, they
must also guarantee that these are documents manufactured under high-security
technological systems.
During the international company Entrust
Datacard’s seminar, the Director of Government Relations, Zeca Pires, explained
that fraud by credential and identity documents falsification leads to losses
of up to 800 million dollars worldwide, according to the UN’s report. In
addition, he added that Interpol has a 40 million projection for stolen or lost
valid travel documents that have not yet been located, passports that could be
used for identity theft or various types of fraud.
Regarding Chile, Zeca Pires compared the
Chilean identification system, the quality of its credentials and identity
concept, with countries from around the continent, “it’s one of the most
advanced countries in this matter, it was the first to implement a passport and
electronic passport project with very good security and reputation”.
He also talked about the challenge that the
State has to create an infrastructure to take better advantage of the
investment made to implement electronic documents, “the digital
government’s first great application won’t be state automation but, the
identity authentication of citizens in private entities. From a practical point
of view, this means going to the shop, scanning your identity card, checking
the State’s information and digital signature, biometrically authenticating the
identity and immediately accessing the credit or performing various procedures.
The idea is for the State to share citizen information with private companies”,
he explained.
On the other hand, Hugo Méndez, Assistant
Manager of SBU Sales for Vigatec stated that this seminar has been given at an
international level and that the Chilean company had the initiative to
replicate it at a local level to figure out any security information that is
applied in different countries, “Entrust Datacard presented physical elements
and some software that allows one to notice if somebody is trying to falsify or
adulterate a credential. The State and the FFAA must understand that their
identification documents must be kept safe, so that the existing ones aren’t
falsified or adulterated”, he emphasized.
Security Technology for Identification
Documents
Mary Olson, Government Solutions Marketing
Manager, spoke about the technologies used to manufacture credentials and
documents. He stressed that there are personalization processes to be followed,
which include important security measures in terms of material quality,
durability, a readable chip, and a high -esolution image that can be easily
identified in the first review.
He presented various design practices,
personalization technologies, materials such as PVC and polycarbonate, types of
layers and laminates, suitable adhesives and added that the worldwide trend is
moving towards laser printing, “80% of the US’s driver’s licenses are manufactured
with this technology, because this is the country’s main identification, so it
needs to be safer. The trend is migrating from polycarbonate to laser, because
it’s a good solution to ensure the document’s high durability.”
Regarding security, he noted that “a
document should be easy to check, if not, it doesn’t have a good purpose,
sometimes governments add too much security and we can’t train people to
evaluate it. It’s important to have the right amount of security elements.”
Olson recommends not investing everything on a single security measure, “it
could be more expensive, as this will be the measure that all counterfeiters
are going to try and copy”.
During the seminar, officials from various
institutions such as the Carabineros in Chile, the Armada, the Civil Registry,
the Chilean Army, the Air Force, Conaset, PDI, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs,
among others, employed some of the tools exposed for the recognition of
document authentication characteristics, such as multilayers, links between
physical and digital security and best practices for the construction of
passports, identity cards, driver’s licenses, official identifications, benefit
cards, etc.
