Corporate Moves and Face Biometrics: This Week’s Top Stories

Corporate news and facial recognition are the big themes in this week’s roundup of FindBiometrics’ top stories, which includes one of the biggest pieces of M&A news the biometrics industry has seen in some time.

That, of course, is Microsoft’s announcement that it’s buying Nuance Communications in a deal valued at $16 billion. The tech giant indicated that it is primarily interested in Nuance’s solutions for clinical dictation in the healthcare sector, but the companies also share an overlapping interest in biometric security, with Nuance’s voice recognition technology being an important component of its portfolio:

Microsoft to Acquire Nuance in $16B Deal

In other corporate news, Jumio announced the appointment of a new Chief Product Officer this week. Bala Kumar comes to the company from TransUnion, where he ended his term as Vice President of Products, Fraud & Identity Solutions. In appointing him as Jumio’s new CPO, CEO Robert Prigge suggested that Kumar will play an important role in the company’s next growth phase:

Former TransUnion VP is Jumio’s New Chief Product Officer

Keeping one foot in the C-suite, we can pivot to the other major theme of this week’s most popular articles – face biometrics. Readers showed a lot of interest in a new interview with Kevin Alan Tussy, the CEO of one of the biggest names in face-based authentication, FaceTec. And he offered some in-depth insights into the importance of liveness detection in the wake of a major hack attack in China:

INTERVIEW: FaceTec CEO Kevin Alan Tussy On the New Security Threats Facing Biometric Liveness Detection

Meanwhile, another major biometrics specialist got some attention with its launch of a new immunity passport solution. IDEMIA’s Health Travel Pass uses facial recognition to link a given user to their official COVID-19 vaccination or test records, and is verified with a Visible Digital Seal from the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO):

IDEMIA Immunity Credential Uses Face Biometrics for User Verification

And finally, on the darker side of the industry, this week brought some controversial news about police use of facial recognition for identification. Readers were understandably interested in a report exposing the NYPD’s rampant use of Clearview AI’s internet-trawling facial recognition platform, in contradiction of the police force’s own denials about having made formal arrangements with the company:

NYPD Gets Caught Lying About Rampant Use of Clearview AI

Stay posted to FindBiometrics next week as we continue to bring you the latest news and interviews from the exciting world of biometrics. To see the hottest stories of the week in mobile digital identity, visit our sibling site Mobile ID World.

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April 17, 2021 – by Alex Perala

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FaceTec’s patented, industry-leading 3D Face Verification and Reverification software anchors digital identity, creating a chain of trust from user onboarding to ongoing authentication on all modern smart devices and webcams. FaceTec’s 3D FaceMaps™ finally make trusted, remote identity verification possible. As the only technology backed by a persistent spoof bounty program and NIST/iBeta Certified Liveness Detection, FaceTec is the global standard for 3D Liveness and Face Matching with millions of users on six continents in financial services, border security, transportation, blockchain, e-voting, social networks, online dating and more. www.facetec.com

AuthenticID provides 100% automated identity verification and fraud detection solutions that are leveraged by companies worldwide, including 2 of the top 3 U.S. Banks, 8 out the top 10 wireless providers in North America, and 2 of the 3 credit bureaus. Using proprietary computer vision and machine learning technology, these solutions help companies accurately verify the identity of their users across retail, digital and call center environments for onboarding and ongoing re-authentication events; KYC, IAM, and more. The solutions are easy to integrate and provide customers a large ROI by stopping fraud losses, increasing customer conversion at onboarding, reducing operational costs and allowing quick and cost-effective operational scalability, all while ensuring global privacy regulations are complied with. https://www.authenticid.com/

Anonybit is a privacy-focused technology platform that provides decentralized solutions for securing personal data, particularly biometric information. Rather than storing sensitive data in centralized repositories, which are vulnerable to breaches, Anonybit uses a distributed architecture that breaks data into smaller encrypted bits and stores them across a network of decentralized nodes. This approach ensures that no single entity has access to the full dataset, enhancing privacy and security, even preventing insider threats. Anonybit is used by leading banks, fintechs and other enterprises for critical biometric identity functions like deduplication and blocklist checks, step up authentication, passwordless login and account recovery https://anonybit.io/

Identity Week aims to be a significant identity industry catalyst. It’s our mission is to help accelerate the move towards a world where trusted identity solutions enable governments and commercial organisations to provide citizens, employees, customers and consumers with a multitude of opportunities to transact in a seamless, yet secure manner. All the while preventing the efforts of those intent on doing harm. https://identityweek.net/

The Biometric Digital Identity Prism is a market landscape framework designed to help influencers and decision makers understand, innovate, and implement digital identity technologies and solutions. This innovative framework for understanding and evaluating the rapidly evolving biometric digital identity marketplace is the only market model that is truly biometric-centric based on the foundational conviction that in the age of digital transformation the only true, reliable link between humans and their digital data is biometrics. https://www.the-prism-project.com

ID R&D is an innovator of biometric facial liveness, document liveness, and voice biometrics. Ranked #1 by NIST, our patented passive approach to liveness, and specialized detection of voice clones, injection attacks and deepfakes, empowers KYC and authentication systems with fast, accurate and secure biometric verification technologies. Over 140 partners in more than 70 countries are collectively processing hundreds of millions of identity checks per year. ID R&D solutions easily integrate with mobile, web, messaging, smart speakers, set-top boxes, and IoT devices. Learn more: www.idrnd.ai