When the land is dry, you irrigate. As threats mushroom, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is proposing a RIVR expansion.
RIVR is the current name for the DHS’ Remote Identity Validation Rally, addressing ways to know who you’re dealing with. The “rally” format allows participants to test new technologies. Perhaps those technology will eventually meet Identity Assurance Level 3 (IAL3).
To encourage participation, the test results from participants are anonymized, and the identities are only revealed if participants choose to reveal them because of stellar performance. Here’s what Microblink said:
“Microblink was evaluated under the anonymized identifier DVS6. Among all participating vendors, Microblink was the only provider to meet RIVR “high performing” system benchmarks across every measured accuracy metric.”
Just a warning that RIVR tests are kind of like NIST tests. They’re sliced and diced in so many ways that almost everyone can claim to be the “winner” of the test. But as I mentioned before, this particular test resulted in a bunch of losers.
In the past, RIVR concentrated on basic identity document validation to ensure that a California driver’s license really was a California driver’s license. The rallies concentrated on topics such as basic document validation, the “selfie to ID” facial recognition matching process common in identity verification, and both active and passive presentation attack detection (liveness).
But the 2026 RIVR expansion encompasses new testing related to deepfake detection.
“To build more robust evaluations, DHS S&T is calling on organizations that can produce or share examples of identity deepfakes attacks and the methods used to create them. Identity deepfakes, which may include face-swap videos or digitally generated or altered identity documents. This data will help the S&T develop a more complete and rigorous dataset for testing.”
This data-gathering exercise is a prelude for additional testing.
“December 2026: Applications open for companies developing presentation attack detection (detecting physical spoofing like masks or photos) and Biometric Deepfake Detection (detecting AI-generated impersonations, such as in video chats or teleconferencing).”
At the same time, DHS is also gathering “a broader set of real and fraudulent passports and driver’s licenses.”
Why? Because security of the homeland doesn’t just include keeping planes from flying into buildings. It also includes digital attacks to our infrastructure.
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