Interview Tony POOLE - DSA (Document Security Alliance)
1) TRUSTECH continues to be a unique meeting point for global stakeholders in payments, identification, and security. From the DSA’s perspective, what added value does engaging with the European and international community at TRUSTECH bring to the broader mission of advancing document and identity security?
DSA is a 20+ year-old association comprised of security-focused members from federal, state, and local government agencies, industry, and academia in North America and Europe. This partnership of more than 120 organizations works diligently as a forum for discourse, education, and opportunity to improve identity security processes, methods, techniques, and technologies.
DSA’s goals are aimed at promoting innovations and advancing the security of identity documents within the complex digital and physical ecosystems of issuance and verification. We seek to eliminate the value and exploits of document counterfeiting.
Our participation at TRUSTECH is essential because we believe it is an important part of the ecosystem that we are advancing and operating within. Many countries in Europe are often referred to as centers of excellence for document security technologies – DSA needs to bring European stakeholders – governments, leading technology companies, and advanced academic organizations – into our discourse.
2) As more governments adopt mobile driver’s licenses, digital IDs, and e-passports, how is the DSA helping ensure interoperability and trust between physical and digital credentials in today’s landscape?
DSA is promoting discourse on digital attacks to biometric systems, using encryption in novel ways on physical documents that are interoperable with digital identity implementation, and raising awareness on some of the vectors to exfiltrate PII. DSA’s members help to drive mitigations and solutions to these threats.
DSA believes the root of identity trust is the physical document – a form of identity that everyone possesses – and that we need to transition from a stove-piped environment where physical and mobile IDs operate in silos, to an environment where both forms of identity are inextricably linked and serve to authenticate each other. We need to move to a hybrid environment where physical documents support the digital documents, and vice versa.
DSA is working closely with its member organizations to address the continuing threat evolution by encouraging governments to take serious action to raise the bar that industry needs to achieve and deliver in support of the security of their identity programs.
3) Artificial intelligence and deepfake technologies are rapidly advancing. How do you see these developments influencing the way governments and industry approach document and identity security by 2030? What motivated your participation at TRUSTECH, and why is an event like this essential for the DSA?
The threat posed by counterfeiters is existential. The sophistication of, and access to, the technologies that counterfeiters use is rapidly advancing, requiring an approach to rise above the typical back and forth anti-counterfeiting cycle of design changes and technology updates.
This threat is greater than the document itself. Fraudulent entities are using counterfeit documents in a way that might be best described as a camel’s nose under the tent. What started as simply selling fake documents has evolved into schemes of skimming personally identifiable information (PII) from fake ID customers and using the PII to gain access to a variety of financial and governmental benefits. These schemes are not only employed in identity theft, but facilitate pre-operational terrorist activities, human trafficking, and extortion, and can be used by a variety of criminal organizations to move or acquire illicit goods.
There is no single solution to these threats. It is critical that governments take it very seriously. Gone are the days of issuing sub-standard identity credentials based on a low-priced, technically acceptable purchasing model. Counterfeiting entities have exploited those documents for far too long. Increasing the technical sophistication of identity documents is paramount. While it may require additional investment upfront, such a move will save untold expenses downstream, while also potentially saving lives.
Our continued participation at TRUSTECH is important as the event provides us an opportunity to engage with government and industry stakeholders and discuss how to address the evolving threats that face us.