Jumio is calling attention to the Higher Education Emergency Relief Fund II (HEERF II), which makes more than $100 billion available to academic institutions in the US. Schools are supposed to use that money to provide financial relief to students, and to purchase technology that will allow them to educate those students in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic.
The latter part of the bill accounts for Jumio’s interest in the matter. The company noted that many academic institutions have migrated to a remote learning environment during the pandemic, and that nearly 40 percent of the colleges and universities in the US are still teaching most of their courses online for the spring semester. That has created a need for hardware and software that can support that increased volume of digital activity, including identity verification software that helps maintain the integrity of the academic process.
Jumio, of course, is a leading provider of such tech, and is pitching its solution to schools that need to confirm the identities of students during classes and exams. The company’s technology can extract someone’s personal information from a photo ID, and can compare that information to a school’s student records to make sure that that person is registered with the school and authorized to take specific classes. Jumio can also compare the image on that ID to a selfie to make sure the right person shows up for class or sits down for an exam.
The deadline for HEERF II grant applications is April 15. Schools that receive federal funding must set aside at least half of that money for financial aid for students, but the rest can be used to purchase or license software that supports the academic mission.
Jumio is not the only company pushing post-password authentication technology to schools during the pandemic. Multiple schools are now using BIO-key’s PortalGuard solution for digital access control, while TECH5 has provided facial recognition technology for an exam security company in India.
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February 17, 2021 – by Eric Weiss
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