Category Archives: Uncategorized

ABI Research and Physical Credentials

Those of us embedded in the identity industry pay special attention to mobile credentials. Although I have wondered whether mobile ID adoption will decrease, we’ve assumed that digital identities will advance.

Just like the death of passwords.

You can see where this is going.

ABI Research has shared its predictions on 13 technology trends for 2026. I paid special attention to number 11.

“It is clear that digital-first identity systems are unlikely to become standard. Most governments will still rely heavily on physical credentials through 2026. Physical documents, such as diver’s licenses and passports, have long life spans. Physical security is already a proven technology, making it essential for continued trust and accessibility in the wake of ever-more sophisticated attack methods. ABI Research cybersecurity analysts view mobile ID as more of a companion to physical credentials.”

Oh, and number 12.

“Interest in biometric payment cards has waned due to high costs and complex onboarding. Zwipe’s bankruptcy in March 2025 is emblematic of this latest trend. To extract returns from their prior investments in biometrics, digital payment providers are pivoting to other markets like secure access and cold wallets. Going forward, the technology will shift from mainstream ambition to specialty use cases, with fewer launches expected in 2026.”

To see what these and the other 11 predictions mean, read the ABI Research article.

Identity for Rent: Gig Economies and Elsewhere

Remember the 2023 Bianca Gonzalez Biometric Update article that I cited in my own 2023 post, “Why Age-Restricted Gig Economy Companies Need Continuous Authentication (and Liveness Detection)“?

The TL;DR…someone authenticates themselves after a delivery company request, but the actual delivery is made by a minor such as a younger brother or sister. As I noted, continuous authentication through the entire delivery process, rather than just at the beginning, nips this fraud in the bud.

By LukaszKatlewa – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=49248622.

Well, another Biometric Update article, this one by Lu-Hai Liang, revisits gig economy identity fraud.

And it introduces a new term: “ID renting.”

“A TransUnion report indicates that weak identity verification processes are leaving gig platforms, workers and consumers exposed to fraud and safety risks.

“The 2026 Gig Economy Worker Report reveals that one in four gig workers has rented or sold access to their accounts, enabling unverified individuals to perform services under their names.”

Of course ID renting is not limited to the gig economy.

Google Gemini.

The whole “money mule” effort is designed to obfuscate the original seller of goods by inserting an intermediary, with the intermediary’s rented identification the ID of record.

Whenever you let someone borrow your identity, you’re endangering everyone.

But there are ways to stop this. If your company offers such a solution, Bredemarket can help you publicize it. Talk to me.

And in case you’re wondering, yes I do my own work.

Chris Allsop Asks, Then Asks, Then Asks Again

You already know how Bredemarket launches a content project with a client.

Bredemarket asks seven questions.

But Bredemarket may not be the source of all knowledge.

Let’s look at Chris Allsop’s process to launch a writing project.

“Step 1: Talk with your client, whether by email, on the phone, or in person. This will give you a clear understanding of the project, the audience and your client’s goals.”

Allsop asks multiple questions, including why, what, and who.

“[A]nswers to these questions will help you write copy that resonates with your audience….”

Great. Bredemarket and Allsop are pretty much in alignment.

But Chris is only on Step 1.

“Step 2: Take your conversation with your client a step further with thorough research.”

I gloss over this but it’s important. If you don’t know an industry it’s important to understand it. And if you do know an industry it’s important to understand it better. Even if a biometric product marketing expert is writing biometric content, it always helps to conduct research.

(Yeah, I’ll share the video. Later.)

Oh, and Chris isn’t done yet.

“Step 3: Study successful promotions, websites, and content in the topic or industry you’re working in. Ask yourself how each promotion got your attention.”

Good idea…to a point. Don’t slavishly imitate other promotions. The content from your client still needs to differentiate from the content from the competitors. And aping some popular brand to call yourself the “Uber of lawn care” just sounds bad when you spend two seconds thinking about it.

(Picture from an older version of https://www.yourgreenpal.com/blog/is-there-an-uber-for-lawn-care)

But whether you ask my seven questions or perform some other type of preparation, the act of preparation is important.

And for those who were waiting for me to share the “landscape” video…

Landscape.

And I might as well share the third of the three.

You Can Measure Quality, But is the Measure Meaningful? (OFIQ)

The purpose of measuring quality should not be for measurement’s own sake. The purpose should be to inform people to make useful decisions.

In Germany, the Bundesamt für Sicherheit in der Informationstechnik (Federal Office for Information Security) has developed the Open Source Face Image Quality (OFIQ) standard.

Experienced biometric professionals can’t help but notice that the acronym OFIQ is similar to the acronym NFIQ (used in NFIQ 2), but the latter refers to the NIST FINGERPRINT image quality standard. NFIQ is also open source, with contributions from NIST and the German BSI, among others.

But NFIQ and OFIQ, while analyzing different biometric modalities, serve a similar purpose: to distinguish between good and bad biometric images.

But do these open source algorithms meaningfully measure quality?

The study of OFIQ

Biometric Update alerted readers to the November 2025 study “On the Utility of the Open Source Facial Image Quality Tool for Facial Biometric Recognition in DHS Operations” (PDF).

Note the words “in DHS Operations,” which are crucial.

  • The DHS doesn’t care about how ALL facial recognition algorithms perform.
  • The DHS only cares about the facial recognition algorithms that may potentially use.
  • DHS doesn’t care about algorithms it would never use, such as Chinese or Russian algorithms.
  • In fact, from the DHS perspective, it probably hopes that the Chinese Cloudwalk algorithm performs very badly. (In NIST tests, it doesn’t.)

So which algorithms did DHS evaluate? We don’t know precisely.

“A total of 16 commercial face recognition systems were used in this evaluation. They are labeled in diagrams as COTS1 through COTS16….Each algorithm in this study was voluntarily submitted to the MdTF as
part of on-going biometric performance evaluations by its commercial entity.”

Usally MdTF rally participants aren’t disclosed, unless a participant discloses itself, like Paravision did after the 2022 Biometric Technology Rally.

“Paravision’s matching system alias in the test was ‘Miami.'”

Welcome to Miami, bienvenidos a Miami. Google Gemini.

So what did DHS find when it used OFIQ to evaluate images submitted to these 16 algorithms?

“We found that the OFIQ unified quality score provides extremely limited utility in the DHS use cases we investigated. At operationally relevant biometric thresholds, biometric matching performance was high and probe samples that were assessed as having very low quality by OFIQ still successfully matched to references using a variety of face recognition algorithms.”

Or in human words:

  • Images that yielded a high quality OFIQ score accurately matched faces using the tested algorithms.
  • Images that yielded a low quality OFIQ score…STILL accurately matched faces using the tested algorithms.
Google Gemini.

So, at least in DHS’ case, it makes no sense to use the OFIQ algorithm.

Your mileage may vary.

If you have questions, consult a biometric product marketing expert.

Or Will Smith. Just don’t make a joke about his wife.

Toss Over the Wall, Or Embed a Partner?

Both product marketing consultants and product marketing employees alike don’t always see the results of the content they create.

But there’s a definite difference between the visibility of external-facing content and internal-facing content.

I’ve created both types of content, both at Bredemarket and as a corporate employee. And I’ve seen this difference.

  • External-facing content is usually visible to its creator. When I wrote a blog post for Incode, or when I write an article or newsletter for a Bredemarket client, by definition I can see the final result. The exceptions to this are unusual and rare.
  • The visibility of internal-facing content varies, with employees seeing more internal facing content then consultants. When I prepared the internal presentation “How MorphoTrust Came To Be” for my department at MorphoTrak I obviously saw it. But if I prepare snippets to incorporate into an internal presentation for a Bredemarket client, I may or may not see the final result.
Google Gemini.

In many cases, consultants toss their content over a virtual wall, where the client does with it what they will. After all, they paid for the content and can do what they want.

What if you need a partner?

But what if a client requires someone who is more integrated into the company’s operations? Or embedded into the company?

This is why I offer the Bredemarket 4444 Partner Retainer, if you need to embed me into your operations while still providing you with budget predictability.

By Staff Sgt. Michael L. Casteel – [1], Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=2407244

If you elect to contract with Bredemarket as an embedded partner in your organization via the Bredemarket 4444 Partner Retainer, then:

  • Bredemarket can create any content you need—blogs, case studies / testimonials, data sheets, e-books, proposals, social media posts / Xs (or whatever tweets are called today), white papers, or anything—within the hours alloted in the partner retainer contract.
  • The length is at your discretion. 288 characters? I’m on it. 50 pages? I’m on it.
  • How do you want to handle kickoffs, reviews, and status calls? It’s entirely up to you.

How does the Bredemarket 4444 Partner Retainer work?

  • Prepaid base hours: The partner retainer contract between you and Bredemarket specifies the maximum number of hours for the following calendar month. This provides predictable costs, and maximum flexibility in how you use Bredemarket to create your content.
  • Additional hours: Any additional hours above the maximum are billed at Bredemarket’s standard hourly rate.
  • Deliverable format: Unless agreed otherwise in advance, Microsoft Word docx including callouts, hyperlinks, key words, hashtags.

If this interests you, schedule a free meeting with me to discuss your needs.

Unless you’d rather drive a truck.

Google Gemini.

Hyper-accuracy: One Hundred Faces

(Part of the biometric product marketing expert series)

I previously mused about an alternative universe in which a single human body had ten (different) faces.

Facial recognition would be more accurate if biometric systems had ten faces to match. (Kind of like you-know-what.)

Well, now I’m getting ridiculous by musing about a person with one hundred faces for identification.

Grok.

When I’m not musing about alternative universes with different biometrics, I’m helping identity/biometric firms market their products in this one.

And this frivolous exercise actually illustrates a significant difference between fingerprints and faces, especially in use cases where subjects submit all ten fingerprints but only a single face. The accuracy benefits are…well, they’re ten times more powerful.

Are there underlying benefits in YOUR biometric technology that you want to highlight? Bredemarket can help you do this. Book a free meeting with me, and I’ll ask you some questions to figure out where we can work together.

Reference Material for the Day: Barry’s Borderpoints

Writers need constant access to reference information from credible sources. Generative AI responses and even Wikipedia articles are sometimes not credible enough (although my buddy Bredebot heavily uses the former).

If you need to understand the borders of a particular country, once resource I’ve run across is Barry’s Borderpoints. Interested readers can not only learn about the borders themselves, but also about the identification of the borderpoints, as well as the “tripoints” (places where three countries come together).

Some of you may have interest in Ukraine’s borders with friend and foe. Barry’s article on Ukraine is here.

From Barry’s Borderpoints Ukraine page.

Ten Faces

I made this available to someone else, so I’m making it available to you. If you’re interested in a non-branded clip of the ten faces, here it is below.

The complete branded version remains at https://bredemarket.com/2026/01/12/1012/

The question again: if a human body had ten faces, how accurate would facial recognition be?

And the companion question…well, you’ll have to go to the branded version to see that.

Ten faces.

Ten Faces, One Finger, Take Two

(Part of the biometric product marketing expert series)

Bredemarket reserves the right to revisit topics I visited before.

Imagine an alternative universe in which a single human body had ten (different) faces and only one finger.

  • How accurate would facial recognition be?
  • How accurate would fingerprint identification be?

Think about the ramifications.

Ten faces, one finger.

Credit for this thought, not original to me, must still remain anonymous.

But if you would like to discuss your biometric marketing and writing needs with a biometric product marketing expert, fill out the “free 30 minute content needs assessment” form on the page linked below to schedule a free conversation.

Stop losing prospects! Use Bredemarket content for tech marketers