ID verification: you don’t need to do it alone

A reality that we live in today

In this way, all the players involved in the traditional or alternative financial sector are interested in an agile, effective, and secure identity verification system.

Especially when it’s known that online fraud is a present reality and that it can occur in any aspect of the business – going from impersonation in social networks or even financial fraud.

According to data from the National Commission for the Protection and Defense of Financial Services Users (Condusef), more than 2 million cyber frauds were reported in Mexico in 2021.

This is also the case in many countries in LATAM. A LexisNexis report showed that at the end of 2021, automated bot attacks increased 32% annually worldwide, with Latin America in the lead, with a growth of 455%.

So, online fraud is a latent risk, and companies involved in processes where identity verification is vital must have reliable systems that provide security to their business and customers.

“People trust good data treatment, so companies have a responsibility to guarantee this,” said an IBM expert in cybersecurity.

Data verification and security

As we stated, it’s vital that ID verification can be done quickly, in the same way, that end users expect that the information and data used to achieve this verification will be stored correctly.

With this in mind, over the years and after several embarrassing experiences – like the one in the movie Catch Me If You Can – governments and companies have grown into the ethical commitment to protect personal data.

And this is a topic that has been discussed previously. For example, in the 1980s, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), with the collaboration of the Council of Europe, published a guide to protecting the privacy and cross-border flows of personal data.

This has led to the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) being a global standard, especially since its entry into effect in May 2018.

This regulation is essential to strengthen people’s fundamental rights in the digital age and facilitate economic activity carried out at the speed of light through the Internet since it clarifies the rules applicable to companies and public bodies in the single digital market.

This is due to a latent problem of using personal data since they are being used as merchandise for sale to the highest bidder.

John Oliver, on his Last Week Tonight program, spoke about the massive data leak by businesses that do not take the security of their customers with due importance. He gave an overview of this inconvenience and aspects that must be considered to keep everyone’s data safe.

In addition, this is an issue that also concerns governments and public entities. For example, China is a country that has opted to have its entire population identified; by 2022, it is expected that the country will have a closed-circuit surveillance camera (CCTV) for every two inhabitants.

Privacy vs security

Likewise, it happens in many other countries; at least 65 of the 176 countries actively use technology to track and control citizens.

To what extent is the promise of greater security worth the loss of privacy? This and many other questions arise in these turbulent times, but they are essential to ask ourselves.

We need to evaluate the technology on its own merits and the direction it takes the more it is deployed. This is why companies must have an ethical commitment to personal processing data and, in turn, go hand in hand with regulations, such as the GDPR, which seeks to protect end users. It’s vital to have an ally who is guided by these principles.