The bad guys are out there, and what is being done for secure ID card issuance and fraud prevention?

The list is long the technologies are all over the map and everyone of the card printer or card manufactures within the industry have their own offerings. Which technology is on track, which is practical, which works, you will need to determine on your own as it is a complex issue. We would suggest you do your home work and find a practical solution that fits your organizations, structure, culture and budget. We do however wish to provide you some information and starting points within this section.

Card manufactures are a good starting point for our discussion. There are card manufactures that specialize in non-reproducible cards. The technologies they implement are similar to those used by many Governments’ approach to printing money. The first step is to control the print media in this case the ID card stock from there it becomes wide open. Some of the techniques are:

• Embedded foil to form patterns, holographs and occasionally encoding.
• Micro text placed in selected locations on the cards which is hard to detect with out magnification of some type, you can even misspell words as a security feature.
• Etching (scratching) is a process used where the card stock is modified to form patterns which are difficult to exactly reproduce as this process requires very specialized machinery with a very fine scale resolution. This etching process can then form images, designs, patterns or text.
• Photo Etching which is the same process as Etching for all practical purposes but can be configured to produce color wash (dying), the color effects are similar to the color you see in many types of currency.
• Ghosted images are usually semi-transparent and produce a different affect on the secure ID cards appearance.

ID card printer manufactures use a variety of techniques and offer multiple solutions for secure ID card issuance and fraud prevention. It appears as if every ID card manufactures have slightly different approaches to the problem, some focus on card issuance and others focus on fraud prevention. Our sales staff will gladly walk you through the maze of options for each ID card printer manufactures security offering. The real issue is what is right for your organization and is it practical to implement.

Here are some of the many approaches the ID card printer manufactures are offering:

• Security keys which are encoded and will only allow the printer to operate when the key is present in the printer.
• Security foils of “Visual Security” which a foil material is placed on a card the security foil is then printed on with a clear over- laminate with text or a holograph design.
• UV Inks is another form of security being offered by many of the ID card printer manufactures.
• Holograms in either low resolution or high resolution are added to the ID card to provide another level of security.
• Some ID card printer manufactures have ID card print drivers which only print an ID card when a password is entered into the ID card printer authorizing the card to be printed.
• A few of the ID card printer manufactures produce a batch print report depicting when the ID card was printed.
• Micro text is also a feature of some of the ID card printers; however, true micro text is difficult at best due to the ID card printer resolution of Thermal ID card printers.

ID card software manufacturers, such as us, also have approached the issue of secure ID card issuance and fraud prevention. As is the case with the ID card printer manufactures the ID card software manufactures have offerings which also provide for advanced levels of security and ID card tampering. A few examples of Id card software protection are:

• Ghosted images which are Images that appear translucent on the card.
• Signatures which are strategically on the front or back of the cards.
• Holographic images which are placed over photographs, logos or text which makes reproducing the ID card template difficult.
• Micro text which can be placed on pictures, images, lines, etc... Keep in mind that micro text on an ID card is not going to give the same results as a pre-printed card due to the ID card printer’s resolution.
• Passwords, with assigned expiration dates from a single level password to multiple level passwords are achievable within certain ID card software offerings.
• Restricted data access to configuration and card design features is an excellent way to insure duplicating ID cards is difficult.
• Restricted profiling, this is a technique used to restrict and profile users of the ID card software. Restriction techniques includes:
• Restricted access by user to specific data by individuals or groups.
• Restricted access to specific times of days or dates, by individual or groups
• Workstation Security by Proximity card authentication.
• Restricted ID card printer access times.
• Audit reports for issued ID cards by individual, group or printed ID cards by individual or group.

Summary to available technologies

As you can see from ID card stock manufactures, ID card printer manufactures to ID card software manufactures there are various techniques and products available to you for the secure issuance of ID cards. Our belief is all these techniques mentioned are good, as an ID card software manufacture we tend to believe that the correct ID card software will go a long way in securing your ID card from fraudulent card issuance. However there is one issue that needs to be covered when we talk about secure ID card issuance and that is physical security.

Do you control the area where ID cards are being manufactured? You really need to consider this issue as part of your ID card issuance strategy. As a matter of fact there are a few other issues you should consider:

• Physical Security.
• Application Level Security (user profiles).
• Data Level Security.
• Materials.

Remember most fraudulent cards are produced internal to your organization, so good security measures with regards to the above mention will go a long way in preventing fraudulent or unauthorized ID card issuance. For additional information on this subject visit our download center for Secure ID card issuance - The first step to security.

 Fraudulent Cards