FaceTec Expands Into Biometric e-Voting with Neuvote Integration

“The integration of FaceTec’s ZoOm, shown to be the most secure biometric authentication method available, provides a solid foundation of trust for the rest of our solution.” – Matthew Heuman, CEO, Neuvote

Having developed one of the most sophisticated mobile biometric authentication solutions in play, FaceTec is now taking a big step into the world of electronic voting.

The company has partnered with Neuvote, a Canadian firm focused on the development of mobile voting technology, whose Hybrid Mobile Voting System has integrated FaceTec’s AI-driven technology. This delivers an end solution that can be used to reliably authenticate end users as they cast their ballots via smartphone.

FaceTec’s ZoOm solution revolves around selfie-based authentication, using 3D face data captured with a standard 2D camera to identify a given end user. This is an increasingly popular approach to mobile authentication, particularly in the financial services sector; but FaceTec has differentiated itself with its use of advanced liveness detection technology that can detect spoofing attacks that attempt to mimic an authorized user. This capability has been thoroughly verified by the iBeta testing lab, with FaceTec having become the first company to attain Level-2 certification in iBeta’s Presentation Attack Detection test earlier this year.

In the highly sensitive domain of government elections, that capability to thwart potential tampering is a critical asset and a safeguard of the democratic process.

“We’ve critically assessed legacy voting processes and have identified where there could be security and identity verification problems,” explained Neuvote CEO Matthew Heuman in a statement announcing the integration. “The integration of FaceTec’s ZoOm, shown to be the most secure biometric authentication method available, provides a solid foundation of trust for the rest of our solution.”

Heuman also lauded ZoOm for its user experience, which delivers near-instant user authentication without the need for cumbersome knowledge-based protocols such as password entry, asserting that “ZoOm has proven to be exceptionally easy to use, a paramount concern in such a broadly deployed application like voting.”

The companies say that Neuvote is currently working with global e-democracy experts, and is planning an initial deployment in Ontario, Canada’s most populous province. That project will launch in 2020, while Neuvote is aiming for further deployments in the US by 2022.

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October 17, 2019 – by Alex Perala