Identity Verification Has an Identity Crisis

Identity verification (IdV) has become conflated with document authentication, creating dangerous confusion about what level of assurance is actually being achieved. Document authentication, selfie matching, and liveness detection each answer different questions and are not equivalent to full identity proofing or contextual identity verification. Identity proofing establishes that an identity exists and belongs to a person; identity verification determines whether that identity should be trusted for a specific interaction. Point-in-time checks are insufficient because identity trust changes over time. Organizations should evaluate IdV solutions by the assurance level they provide relative to transaction risk, not by feature checklists. The post also covers NIST IALs, KYC vs. IdV distinctions, synthetic identity fraud, and the limitations of biometric matching against deepfakes.

Source: https://securityboulevard.com/2026/06/identity-verification-has-an-identity-crisis. 8 Sync News only summarizes and links out; content copyright belongs to the authors and original sources.