Onfido partners with INTERPOL to provide training to government officials on detecting fraudulent identity documents.
July 26-28 2021: New York, United States
Joint training sessions support border control and immigration officers at U.S. airports to detect fake physical and digital identity documents
Onfido, the global identity verification and authentication provider, together with INTERPOL, the world’s largest police organisation, delivered training to U.S. border control and immigration officers in the latest document examination techniques to help enhance border security checks.
As part of the training, instructors from Onfido and INTERPOL’s Counterfeit Currency and Security Documents (CCSD) unit delivered a three-day, virtual document security examination training course to officers from New York’s JFK and Newark International airports.
Course participants were trained on the latest security features embedded in official government identity documents and provided practical exercises for identifying fraudulent documents including counterfeits, forgeries and fraudulently obtained documents.
The use of INTERPOL global policing capabilities was also high on the agenda, including:
- Its Stolen and Lost Travel Documents database, which holds some 100 million records on a range of documents such as passports, identity cards and visa stamps
- Edison (Electronic Documentation and Information System on Investigation Networks), which provides examples of genuine travel documents, in order to help identify fakes
- The Digital INTERPOL Alert Library – Document (Dial-Doc), which allows countries to issue global alerts based on newly detected forms of document counterfeiting
Onfido is a longstanding partner of INTERPOL, providing training courses to police, border and immigration officials across the world. In 2019, Onfido provided a 3-day training course to government officials from Southeast Asia to help them better detect fraudulent identity documents. More recently, Onfido and INTERPOL hosted a joint webinar on July 29th to advise attendees on the latest fraud trends and detection methods for border officers.
“I was honored to welcome the 30 Customs and Border Protection officers from the New York and New Jersey areas to this vital three-day training event,” said the Director of INTERPOL’s National Central Bureau (USNCB) in Washington DC. “This rigorous and critical training is the result of a successful collaboration between the USNCB, Customers and Border Protection and INTERPOL that will enhance the ability of border officers to recognize counterfeit security and travel documents.”
Michael Van Gestel, Onfido’s Global Head of Fraud, emphasised the importance of the continued partnership with INTERPOL: “Following the success of the training in 2019, we continue our partnership with INTERPOL to share further training on the latest developments in the field of document authenticity verification. This year, as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, we moved from a physical to an online training format. However, this only highlights the same shift that criminals have experienced over the last year or so. Never before has there been such a focus on online attack vectors, and as criminals continue to innovate, this underscores the importance of unifying our knowledge of both 3D and 2D identity document authentication and to share this unique knowledge in training courses such as this one.”
CCSD Coordinator, Daniela Djidrovska said: “Document verification is crucial to ensure that documents are both genuine and belong to the rightful holder. While the examination of identity documents is increasingly being taken over by artificial intelligence, travel documents are designed to be verified by trained personnel using sophisticated forensic document equipment. This joint CCSD-Onfido virtual training provided a vital opportunity to review best practices in the face of the continuous evolution of ID document fraud.”
March 12-14 2019: Manila, Philippines
Combined fraud expertise will address the latest printing techniques and attack vectors criminals are employing to spoof government ID checks.
Onfido is partnering with INTERPOL (The International Criminal Police Organization) to provide a 3-day training course to government officials from Southeast Asia to help them better detect fraudulent identity documents.
Participants will include government officials such as police, border control agents, and immigration officials from the INTERPOL member countries: Cambodia, Laos, Philippines and Vietnam.
The 3-day programme (March 12-14) taking place in Manila, will focus on the mechanical (intaglio, offset, letterpress, screen printing) and digital printing techniques (inkjet, laser, thermal transfer, laser engraving) used to create identity documents and how fraudsters emulate them using commercially available technologies. The course will educate attendees on the latest security features embedded in official government IDs and provide practical exercises that teach tried and tested methods for identifying various fraudulent documents including counterfeits, forgeries, fantasy and fraudulently obtained documents.
Onfido’s fraud team led by former Dutch government immigration ID expert, Michael Van Gestel, will provide an introduction to fraud, explaining various digital attack vectors and how to overcome them. The team will showcase the difference between 3D and 2D document verification and cover a range of additional topics including: imaging techniques to augment decision-making, attack vector trends, sophisticated attacks, imposter detection and the Glasgow Test, and outline currently known vulnerabilities.
"Onfido is excited to be teaming up with INTERPOL, the world’s largest international police organization, to bring our combined industry knowledge and fraud expertise to government officials across Southeast Asia,” said Michael Van Gestel, Fraud and Document Expert at Onfido. “As criminals get more sophisticated in designing new attack vectors, there has never been a more important time to unify our knowledge of both 3D and 2D document authentication and share this in a unique training course."
