Tag Archives: digital identity
Proof of IAL3
I was up bright and early to attend a Liminal Demo Day, and the second presenter was Proof. Lauren Furey and Kurt Ernst presented, with Lauren assuming the role of the agent verifying Kurt’s identity.
The mechanism to verify the identity was a video session. In this case, Agent Lauren used three methods:
- Examining Kurt’s ID, which he presented on screen.
- Examining Kurt’s face (selfie).
- Examining a credit card presented by Kurt.
One important note: Agent Lauren had complete control over whether to verify Kurt’s identity or not. She was not a mere “human in the loop.” Even if Kurt passed all the checks, Lauren could fail the identity check if she suspected something was wrong (such as a potential fraudster prompting Kurt what to do).
If you’ve been following my recent posts on identity assurance level, you know what happened next. Yes, I asked THE question:
“Another question for Proof: does you solution meet the requirements for supervised remote identity proofing (IAL3)?”
Lauren responded in the affirmative.
It’s important to note that Proof’s face authentication solution incorporates liveness detection, so there is reasonable assurance that the person’s fake is not a spoof or a synthetic identity.
So I guess I’m right, and that we’re seeing more and more IAL3 implementations, even if they don’t have the super-duper Kantara Initiative certification that NextgenID has.
Unlocking High-Value Financial Transactions: The Critical Role of Identity Assurance Level 3 (IAL3)
(Picture designed by Freepik.)
I’ve previously discussed the difference between Identity Assurance Level 2 (IAL2) and Identity Assurance Level 3 (IAL3). The key differentiator is that IAL3 requires either (1) in-person identity proofing or (2) remote supervised identity proofing.
Who and how to use IAL3
Who can provide remote supervised identity proofing?
“NextgenID Trusted Services Solution provides Supervised Remote Identity Proofing identity stations to collect, review, validate, proof, and package IAL-3 identity evidence and enrollment data for CSPs operating at IAL-3.”
And there are others who can provide the equivalent of IAL3, as we will see later.
How do you supervise a remote identity proofing session?
“The camera(s) a CSP [Credential Service Provider] employs to monitor the actions taken by a remote applicant during the identity proofing session should be positioned in such a way that the upper body, hands, and face of the applicant are visible at all times.”
But that doesn’t matter with me now. What matters to me is WHEN we need remote identity proofing sessions.
Mitek Systems’ Adam Bacia provides one use case:
“IAL3 is reserved for high-risk environments such as sensitive government services.”
So that’s one use case.
But there is another.
When to use IAL3 for financial transactions
Governments aren’t the only entities that need to definitively know identities in critically important situations.
What about banks and other financial institutions, which are required by law to know their customers?
Now it’s one thing when one of my Bredemarket clients used to pay me by paper check. Rather than go to the bank and deposit it in person at a teller window (in person) or at an ATM (remote supervised), I would deposit the check with my smartphone app (remote unsupervised).
Now the bank assumed a level of risk by doing this, especially since the deposited check would not be in the bank’s physical possession after the deposit was completed.
But guess what? The risk was acceptable for my transactions. I’m disclosing Bredemarket company secrets, but that client never wrote me a million dollar check. Actually, none of my clients has ever written me a million dollar check. (Perhaps I should raise my rates. It’s been a while. If I charge an hourly rate of $100,000, I will get those million dollar checks!)
So how do financial institutions implement the two types of IAL3?
In-person
Regarding IAL3 and banks, in-person transactions are supported in certain cases, even with the banks’ moves to close branches.
“If you need to initiate a funds transfer payment, an authorized signer for your account may also initiate funds (wire) transfers at any Chase branch.”
Note the use of the word “may.” However, if you don’t want to go to a branch to make a wire transfer, you have to set up an alternate method in advance.
Remote supervised
What about remote supervised transactions at financial institutions, where you are not physically present, but someone at the bank remotely sees you and everything you do? Every breath you take? And every move you make? Etcetera.
It turns out that the identity verification providers support video sessions between businesses (such as banks) and their customers. For example, Incode’s Developer Hub includes several references to a video conference capability.
To my knowledge, Incode has not publicly stated whether any of its financial identity customers are employing this video conference capability, but it’s certainly possible. And when done correctly, this can support the IAL3 specifications.
Why to use IAL3 for financial transactions
For high-risk transactions such as ones with high value and ones with particular countries, IAL3 protects both the financial institutions and their customers. It lessens the fraud risk and the possible harm to both parties.
Some customers may see IAL3 as an unnecessary bureaucratic hurdle…but they would feel differently if THEY were the ones getting ripped off.
This is why both financial institutions and identity verification vendors need to explain the benefits of IAL3 procedures for riskier transactions. And do it in such a way that the end customers DEMAND IAL3.
To create the content to influence customer perception, you need to answer the critically important questions, including why, how, and benefits. (There are others.)
And if your firm needs help creating that content, Underdog is here.
I mean Bredemarket is here.
Visit https://bredemarket.com/mark/ and schedule a time to talk to me—for free. I won’t remotely verify your identity during our videoconference, but I will help you plan the content your firm needs.
Battling deepfakes with…IAL3?
(Picture designed by Freepik.)
The information in this post is taken from the summary of this year’s Biometrics Institute Industry Survey and is presented under the following authority:
“You are welcome to use the information from this survey with a reference to its source, Biometrics Institute Industry Survey 2025. The full report, slides and graphics are available to Biometrics Institute members.”
But even the freebie stuff is valuable, including this citation of two concerns expressed by survey respondents:
“Against a backdrop of ongoing concerns around deepfakes, 85%
agreed or agreed strongly that deepfake technology poses a
significant threat to the future of biometric recognition, which
was similar to 2024.
“And two thirds of respondents (67%) agreed or agreed strongly
that supervised biometric capture is crucial to safeguard against
spoofing and injection attacks.”
Supervised biometric capture? Where have we heard that before?
IAL3 requires “[p]hysical presence” for identity proofing. However, the proofing agent may “attend the identity proofing session via a CSP-controlled kiosk or device.” In other words, supervised enrollment.
Now remote supervised enrollment and even in-person supervised enrollment is not a 100.00000% guard against deepfakes. The subject could be wearing a REALLY REALLY good mask. But it’s better than unsupervised enrollment.
How does your company battle deepfakes?
How do you tell your clients about your product?
Do you need product marketing assistance? Talk to Bredemarket.
When Prospects Ask Technical Marketers the Tough Questions
Some technical marketers are expert at spinning soft fluffy stories about how their AI-powered toilet paper can cure cancer…which can be very persuasive as long as the prospects don’t ask any questions.
- For example, let’s say you’re telling a Chick-fil-A in Kettering, Ohio that you’ll keep 17 year olds out of their restaurant. Are you ready when the prospect asks, “How do you KNOW that the person without ID is 17 years and 359 days old, and is not 18?”
- Or let’s say you’re telling a state voter agency that you’ll enforce voter ID laws. Are you ready when the prospect asks, “How do you KNOW that the voter ID is real and not fake? Or that it is fake and not real?”
Be prepared to answer the tough questions. Expert testimonials. Independent assessments of your product’s accuracy. Customer case studies.
Analyze your product’s weaknesses. (And the threats, if you’re a SWOT groupie.)
Identity Assurance Level 3 (IAL3): When Identity Assurance Level 2 (IAL2) Isn’t Good Enough
(Picture designed by Freepik.)
(Part of the biometric product marketing expert series)
I’ve talked about Identity Assurance Levels 1, 2, and 3 on several occasions. Most notably regarding Login.gov’s initial failure to adhere to Identity Assurance Level 2 (IAL2). (Old news; after the pilot, Login.gov is now certified for IAL2.)
But as usually happens, IAL2 is yesterday’s news. Because biometric tech always gets harder better faster stronger.
Refresher on IAL1, IAL2…and IAL 3
Let’s review the three identity assurance levels.
For our purposes, the big difference between IAL2 and IAL3 is that IAL2 allows “either remote or physically-present identity proofing,” while IAL3 requires “[p]hysical presence” for identity proofing. However, the proofing agent may “attend the identity proofing session via a CSP-controlled kiosk or device.” In other words, supervised enrollment.
When do you need IAL3? Mitek’s Adam Bacia clarifies:
“IAL3 is reserved for high-risk environments such as sensitive government services.”
How are solutions approved for a particular Identity Assurance Level?
Now I could get on my product marketing soapbox and loudly proclaim that my service is IAL2 compliant, or IAL3 compliant, or IAL4 compliant. (“What? You don’t know about IAL4? Obviously you’re not authorized to know about it.”)
But I doubt you would, um, trust my declaration.
Enter the Kantara Initiative, which manages an Identity Assurance Approval Process. For our purposes, we want to focus on the NIST 800-63 rev.3 class of approval:
“Available to Credential Service Providers offering Full or Component Credential Management Services. Modeled on best practice (drawing from, among other sources, ISO/IEC 27001, ISO/IEC 29115), this Class of Approval ensures the provider organization’s good standing and management / operational practices and assesses criteria which are derived strictly from NIST SP 800-63 rev.3 requirements, ensuring a conformant technical provision of the provider organization’s service.
“Assurance Levels: IAL2, IAL3; AAL2, AAL3; FAL2, FAL3”
- You see that the Kantara Initiative doesn’t even offer an approval for IAL1, just for IAL2 and IAL3.
- It also offers approvals for AAL2 and AAL3. I’ve previously discussed Authenticator Assurance Levels (AALs) in this post. Briefly, IALs focus on the initial identity proofing, while AALs focus on the authentication of a proven identity.
- And you can also see that it offers approvals for FAL2 and FAL3. I’ve never discussed Federation Assurance Levels (FALs) before.
Component Services IAL2 approvals…and an IAL3 approval
Now if you go to the Kantara Initiative’s Trust Status List and focus on the Component Services, you’ll see a number of companies and their component services which are approved for NIST 800-63 rev.3 and offer an assurance level of IAL2.
With one exception.
“NextgenID Trusted Services Solution provides Supervised Remote Identity Proofing identity stations to collect, review, validate, proof, and package IAL-3 identity evidence and enrollment data for CSPs operating at IAL-3. The NextGenID TSS Identity Stations enable remote operators to remotely supervise NIST SP 800-63A compliant Supervised Remote Identity Proofing (SRIP) sessions for credentialing.”
So if remote identity assurance is not good enough for you, there’s a solution. I’ve already discussed NextgenID’s SUPERVISED remote identity proofing in this post. And there’s a video.
Trust Swiftly has also designed a remote IAL3 solution, but I couldn’t find Trust Swiftly on the Kantara Initiative’s Trust Status List. Perhaps it was processed under another accredited assessor.
But clearly biometric product marketers are paying attention to the identity assurance levels…at least the real ones (not IAL4). But are they communicating benefit-oriented messages to their prospects?
Biometric product marketing has to be targeted to the right people, with the right message. And the biometric product marketing expert at Bredemarket can help a company’s marketing organization create effective content. Talk to Bredemarket.
PoisonSeed and FIDO Update
Update to my July 21 post “PoisonSeed: Cross-Device Authentication Shouldn’t Allow Authentication on a Fraudster’s Device.” FIDO’s cross-device authentication is NOT inherently insecure.
From Chris Burt at Biometric Update:
“A reported passkey vulnerability has been walked back, and FIDO is recommended as the fix to the vulnerability of “phishable” MFA wreaking havoc on corporate networks around the world.
“The PoisonSeed attack reported by security company Expel earlier this month does not give access to protected assets, if the FIDO Cross-Device Authentication flow is properly implemented.”
Proper implementation and configuration is essential.
PoisonSeed: Cross-Device Authentication Shouldn’t Allow Authentication on a Fraudster’s Device
(Important July 30 update here.)
(Imagen 4)
The FIDO Alliance is one of the chief proponents of the “death of passwords” movement, and is working on delivering secure authentication. But even the most secure authentication method is not 100% secure. Nothing is.
Authentication is a complex undertaking, and the ability to authenticate on a new device is a special challenge. But the FIDO Alliance has addressed this:
“Cross device authentication allows a user to sign in with their device using a QR code.
“FIDO Cross-Device Authentication (CDA) allows a passkey from one device to be used to sign in on another device. For example, your phone can be linked to your laptop, allowing you to use a passkey from your phone to sign into a service on your laptop.
“CDA is powered by the FIDO Client-to-Authenticator Protocol (CTAP) using “hybrid” transport. CTAP is implemented by authenticators and client platforms, not Relying Parties.”
What could go wrong? Well, according to Expel, plenty:
“After entering their username and password on the phishing site, the user was presented with a QR code….
“What happened behind the scenes is the phishing site automatically sent the stolen username and password to the legitimate login portal of the organization, along with a request to utilize the cross-device sign-in feature of FIDO keys. The login portal then displayed a QR code….
“In the case of this attack, the bad actors have entered the correct username and password and requested cross-device sign-in. The login portal displays a QR code, which the phishing site immediately captures and relays back to the user on the fake site. The user scans it with their MFA authenticator, the login portal and the MFA authenticator communicate, and the attackers are in.
“This process—while seemingly complicated—effectively neutralizes any protections that a FIDO key grants, and gives the attackers access to the compromised user’s account, including access to any applications, sensitive documents, and tools such access provides.”
Presumably the FIDO Alliance will address this soon.
When Social Platforms Convert Users Into Identity Verification Salespeople
(Imagen 4)
(Author’s preface: I was originally going to schedule this post for the middle of next week. But by the time I wrote it, the end of the post referenced a current event of astronomical proportions. Since said current event may be forgotten by the middle of next week, I am publishing it now.)
As a proponent of identity verification and a biometric product marketing expert I should like this…but I don’t.
I got the message and the message is clear
You get a message on a platform from someone you don’t know. The message may look something like this:
“John ,
“I hope this message finds you well. I came across your profile and was truly impressed by your background. While I’m not a recruiter, I’m assisting in connecting talented professionals with a startup that is working on a unique initiative.
“Given your experience, I believe you could be a fantastic fit for their senior consultant role. If you’re open to exploring this opportunity, I’d be happy to share more details and introduce you to the team directly. Please let me know if you’re interested!”
Let’s count the red flags in this message, which is one I actually received on May 30 from someone named David Joseph:
- The author was truly impressed by my background, but didn’t cite any specifics about my background that impressed them. This exact same message could be sent to a biometric product marketing expert, a nuclear physicist, or a store cashier.
- The author is not a recruiter, but a connector who will presumably pass me on to someone else. Why doesn’t the “someone else” contact me directly?
- The whole unidentified startup working on a unique initiative story. Yes, some companies operate as stealth firms before revealing their corporate identity. Amway. Prinerica. Countless MLMs with bad reputations. Trust me, these initiatives are not unique.
- That senior consultant title. Not junior consultant. Senior consultant. To make that envelope stuffing role even more prestigious.
I got the note and the note is even clearer
But I wasn’t really concerned with the message. I get these messages all the time.
So what concerned me?
The note attached to the message by the platform that hosted the message.
“Don’t know David? Ask David to verify their profile information before responding for added security.”
The platform, if you haven’t already guessed, is LinkedIn, the message a LinkedIn InMail.
Let’s follow the trail.
- LinkedIn let “David” use the platform without verifying his identity or verifying that Randstad is truly his employer as his profile states.
- LinkedIn sold “David” a bunch of InMail credits so that he could privately share this unique opportunity.
- Now LinkedIn wants me to do its dirty work and say, “Hey David, why don’t you verify your profile?”
Now the one thing in LinkedIn’s favor is that LinkedIn—unlike Meta—lets its users verify their profiles for free. Meta charges you for this.
But again, why should I do LinkedIn’s dirty work?
Why doesn’t LinkedIn prevent users from sending InMails unless their profiles are verified?
The answer: LinkedIn makes a ton of money selling InMails to people without verified profiles. And thus makes money off questionable businesspeople and outright scammers.
Instead of locking down the platform and preventing scammers from joining the platform in the first place.
It’s like LinkedIn openly embraces scammers.
And everyone knows it.
Agentic AI NPEs, Ephemeral and Non-Individual
People are people, and why should it be that non-person entities (NPEs) are treated the same? The girl is NOT the robot.
Non-static
In a June 30 LinkedIn post, Eric Olden of Strata caused me to realize that my approach to NPEs is too uniform and needs to be more nuanced.
“Agentic identity isn’t just a new type of NHI. AI agents might functionally fall under the “non-human identity” umbrella—but that label doesn’t really cut it since we’re not talking about static service accounts or API keys.”
In a table published in the original post, Olden semantically defines NHIs as the persistent entities with unchanging privileges. Agentic identities, in Olden’s cosmos, are ephemeral.
But Olden identifies one additional distinction that has nothing to do with lifespan.
“AI agents are digital actors that can reason and make decisions across systems.”
Olden notes that the characteristics of agentic AI offer both power and risk.
Impermanent
ConductorOne shares Olden’s observations on agentic AI:
“Often ephemeral, existing for just seconds or minutes depending on the task.
“Requires role-based or task-specific access, rather than broad or persistent permissions.
“Capable of autonomous decision-making and executing actions in real-time.
“Built to integrate with existing systems and interact securely with other agents.
“Expands the potential for AI solutions by enabling action—not just insight or content.”
Unaccountable
So how do you set up individual accounts for these extremely powerful non-person entities that appear and disappear?
According to Juan Ignacio Torres Durán, you don’t.
“Modern architectures — cloud-native, ephemeral workloads, APIs, containers, robotic processes — don’t fit neatly into the account model. They’re fast, dynamic, and short-lived. They need access right now, based on who or what they are, where they run, and what they do.
“And here’s the shift: We don’t need to create an account for each of them. We just need to recognize the entity, validate it, and project a governed identity that can be used for access decisions.”
So no distinct individuality for NPEs. That’s an interesting…um…world.
Bredemarket 