An exciting development for OpSec is the use of mobile authentication platforms for governments. An example of that would be one of our very first clients, where we developed a mobile authentication solution for a government that provided excise stamps.
Excise stamps are used in liquor, tobacco, alcohol, a broad variety of products, and it’s a way for a government to collect revenues. On those stamps is a series of numbers, bar codes, information that we print on behalf of the government. It allows a government official, customs official, or a law enforcement official to go and, using a standard mobile device, interrogate that excise stamp, and know right away whether tax has been paid on that product and whether, in fact, that product is legitimate. So that’s a very exciting use of this mobile authentication platform in the government space.
The same technology has application to driver’s licenses, to identity documents, to other types of government issued documents, so that governments, and their agents, and ultimately customers have the assurance that these government issued documents are, in fact, real and authentic.
The bar has been raised for counterfeiters in this space substantially. Whereas previously a counterfeiter merely had to try and replicate a currency or an excise stamp or an identity document, they are now faced with the task of replicating an entire ecosystem around that product or around that document, so that they can try and fool the government agent into believing that that’s correct. We’ve never seen a counterfeiter successfully replicate this.
When the counterfeiters try and simulate these mobile authentication platforms, we will already have developed the next generation of technologies for our clients. Our job, as a company, is to stay ahead of the counterfeiters, who we view as our prime competitors.
