Digital Transformation Touches Off Massive Spike In Spoofing & Presentation Fraud Attacks

With the recent wave of digital transformation, we have officially entered a new era of identity verification. Mass adoption of online service offerings and money exchange have put digital identity and trust at the forefront of safe onboarding and ecosystem security. And it’s perhaps no surprise that the sheer growth and volume of digital transactions have started to attract fraudsters seeking to circumvent even the most robust identity verification and risk gates. As the pandemic touched off rapid COVID-19 relief fund distribution and more consumers looked to the internet to conduct business, digital fraud attacks ensued and spread like wildfire for unemployment claims, stimulus checks, debt relief, lending, money transfer, stock trading, and more. This confluence of forces rocked the trust and confidence of not only many consumers, but also many businesses looking to continue their operations while taking advantage of the digital boom.

In some ways, it’s simple. We know a high degree of accuracy in identity verification fosters a safe environment in which to conduct business while establishing ecosystem trust. Meanwhile, consumer expectations continue to evolve, as individuals want the convenience and speed of digital services but accompanied by the same security assurances as existed before. Companies online have to rise to this challenge and respond to consumer demand, and employ solutions that guarantee trust in transactions. If not, certain enterprises will struggle and consumers will go elsewhere.

A bit more background: document verification was originally devised as a step-up layer for additional fraud and KYC checks. More and more, however, it became the norm at sign-up and for high-value transactions on digital platforms catering to younger demographics who were accustomed to this type of information sharing. Separate but related, document verification was also originally used to authenticate the legitimacy of a government-issued ID or document and then run a basic facial comparison check to ensure the person submitting the document was the actual owner of the ID. This type of check used to be enough to deter bad actors, but no longer!

Growing sophistication of fraudsters forced the industry to realize that simple facial comparison analysis was inadequate. Technology then tried to play catch up, and more robust document verification solutions started integrating biometric verification features such as liveness to analyze the selfie capture process itself. These more advanced techniques could detect basic photo printouts to wearable masks which were used to mimic their targets. However, just as was the case with facial comparison, fraudsters again evolved and improved at their craft, rendering basic biometric verification substandard.

Today, we have reached the next frontier in document verification security. We are excited to announce Socure’s document verification solution, DocV, employs advanced biometric verification, including certified National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) Presentation Attack Detection (PAD) Level 2 liveness to thwart spoofing attempts with up to 99.5% accuracy. Amazingly, it can accomplish this passively within the same single-frame capture used for facial comparison, without increasing friction. DocV provides trusted end-to-end document verification with document authentication and biometric verification (both facial comparison and liveness detection). In addition, DocV is the only multi-dimensional document verification solution—utilizing Socure’s ID+ platform to assess name, email, phone, address, device IP, and more to create a 360-degree view of the identity of a consumer.

As mentioned before, this is a new era, and identity verification solutions require new, advanced technology to safely support business transactions across digital platforms. The team at Socure simply won’t accept a world where a prospective customer is approved based on an authenticated document, which is real, but that document is stolen and being exploited by a bad actor going to great lengths to look-like their victim. Socure’s DocV with advanced biometric verification, NIST PAD L-2 liveness, is a critical piece of this puzzle and will help cultivate digital trust where trust didn’t exist before. We look forward to you joining us in this journey.

To learn more about Socure’s DocV solution, download the fact sheet or schedule a demo today.