The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Science and Technology Directorate (S&T) has announced the launch of the new Remote Identity Validation Technology Demonstration (RIVTD).
Held in partnership with the Transportation Security Administration (TSA), Homeland Security Investigations Forensic Laboratory, and the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), RIVTD is a series of technology challenges throughout 2023. The sessions will challenge industry to deliver secure, accurate, and easy-to-use remote identity validation technologies to combat identity fraud when users apply for government services, open bank accounts or verify social media accounts.
“In recent years, there has been significant growth in user demand to create new accounts or apply for benefits without going to a government office or local business,” said Arun Vemury, Lead of S&T’s Biometric and Identity Technology Center. “As a result, there are new tools on the market that attempt to authenticate documents and verify the identity of the applicants. While these technologies provide transformative improvement in user convenience, there are a wide range of questions about the performance and fairness of the technologies as well as concerns that bad actors could exploit weaknesses in the new process to commit fraud at scale.”
DHS S&T and its partners will evaluate the ability of systems to authenticate identity documents, assess the “liveness” of selfie photos, and evaluate identity verification using images taken with smartphones and similar devices.
The goal is to enable industry to develop more secure, accurate, and easy to use technologies; objectively measure performance against realistic and sophisticated attacks; answer questions about the overall performance, risks, and fairness of these technologies for use in commercial or government applications; and inform efforts to standardize and certify technologies that are effective against sophisticated and rapidly evolving attacks.
“TSA is very happy to be expanding our partnership with DHS S&T into remote identity validation,” said TSA Identity Capability Manager Jason Lim. “The results of this demonstration will inform our understanding of the trust, security, privacy, and equity in the emerging digital identity space, including mobile driver’s license, where TSA has been a leading player working directly with key industry vendors and issuing authorities.”
“In the past year, we’ve seen tremendous innovation from the identity and biometrics industry to adapt to new government and private sector identity needs,” said Vemury. “While we understand performance will vary among different technology providers, we need to develop measures to evaluate the performance and new risks associated with these capabilities.”
“It is vital that we understand the capabilities of these technologies, therefore NIST will contribute to this important effort through robust technology evaluation and standardized metrics,” said NIST Biometrics Evaluator Patrick Grother.
Technology developers of remote identity validation capabilities are encouraged to participate in the RIVTD challenge. Applications are accepted starting in January 2023.
Interested organizations may visit DHS S&T to find out more or contact peoplescreening@hq.dhs.gov to register for the December 13 informational webinar.
