Safeguarding identities Morpho

SAFEGUARDING IDENTITIES

Morpho, part of the Safran group, is through its e-Documents Division one of the world’s most important manufacturers of payment cards and identity documents. The company supplies passports and driving licences to governments all over the world and makes credit and debit cards for leading European banks. Joseph Altham spoke to Christopher Goulet, head of sales for central and eastern Europe, payment and ID documents, within Morpho’s e-Documents Division, to find out some of the ways that Morpho is helping to fight crime.

The improvements that have been realised in telecommunications and information technology have made banking and payment more convenient all round the world. At the same time, these changes have given rise to new threats by opening up new opportunities for the criminal. The employees of Morpho’s e-Documents Division are the locksmiths of the digital world and work for the benefit of consumers and governments to stop confidential information from being stolen or misused.

Morpho makes sophisticated identification documents such as passports that are designed to prevent forgery. For banks, Morpho’s comprehensive range of Visa and MasterCard products have built-in high security features that protect consumers from card fraud. In the digital environment, Morpho fights identity theft with techniques such as encryption and the use of one-time passwords, thereby helping consumers to feel comfortable about making online transactions.

Chip and PIN

By consistently investing in research and development, Morpho has established a strong position in the payment card market. In the 1990s Morpho was involved in creating the EMV (Europay, MasterCard and Visa) specifications for credit and debit cards, which are the global standard for the industry. Occasionally, credit card holders fall victim to a crime known as ‘skimming’. A typical example might be a waiter in a restaurant who steals a customer’s credit card details when the customer pays the bill. The waiter then sells this information to someone else who uses it to make fraudulent transactions. Across Europe, the chip and PIN (personal identification number) system of payment has lowered the incidence of skimming by making this type of fraud harder to commit. “Morpho was a pioneer in chip and PIN technology,” stated Mr Goulet. “Germany has been used to chip and PIN technology for more than 10 years and it provides a high level of security.”

Passports

A criminal who wants to evade justice or to cross a border unnoticed needs a fake passport. Governments therefore aim to provide their citizens with passports that will be difficult to forge. Morpho’s factory in the Dutch city

NedCard – High Tech, High Secure and Highly Efficient!

NedCard is a global leading supplier of assembly and testing services for secure chips that are embedded in cards and used in Payment and Identification applications. NedCard has highly secure production sites around the world with a total installed capacity of up to 1 billion units per year.

NedCard’s State-of-the-Art, fully automated production lines are capable of assembling millions of chips per day, cost efficiently and with consistent high quality. For many years NedCard has been providing such assembly services to global leading manufacturer of payment cards and identification documents, e.g. to Morpho

For more information please contact Henri Laitervo at h.laitervo@nedcard.nl

of Haarlem specialises in the secure printing techniques that are required to achieve this objective. As Mr Goulet explained, while forgeries are more easily spotted with a magnifying glass or under a microscope, there are situations when passports have to be checked using the naked eye. “On the street, when a policeman wants to verify someone’s identity, a visual inspection of the document is the only possibility.” This is why Morpho believes that passports should have what Mr Goulet calls “very strong first-line security features” which allow an official to make checks without the need for any special tool.

As Mr Goulet explained, the simplest way for criminals to travel using a false passport is to use one that has been stolen. “The days when criminals could easlily print their own passports from scratch are long gone. Criminals would not be able to reproduce the hologram feature or get hold of the top secret inks that are used.” Instead, they resort to photo substitution. “The counterfeiter will apply and transfer a clear foil over an authentic document on which he will print his own photograph in such a way that it will match the authentic photo, eye to eye, mouth to mouth, nose to nose.” Morpho offers a number of solutions to counter photo substitution. “One of the strongest features you can use to tackle this overlaid foil is a tactile structure on your ID document. So when you are checking the document, you have to take it in your hands. You either immediately feel the structure, or you don’t. If the document has been overlaid with a foil, then the feel will be completely different.”

Innovations

A more advanced solution to the problem of photo substitution is for the passport to include a 3D photo of the holder. The image can be seen without the need for special 3D spectacles. Morpho has patented this innovation, which relies on a lens structure to protect the document. “A very fine lens structure on your photo area is applied during production of the document. With personalising, a stereo photo is laser-engraved into this lens structure. When someone examines the document, he will be able to see the 3D portrait of the passport holder. It would be very hard for a counterfeiter to reproduce this in the same way.” A criminal always looks for a weakness that he can exploit. Technologies change all the time, so Morpho is engaged in a constant search for new security solutions in order to frustrate the criminal’s ambitions. “It’s a race between the good guys and the bad guys. This is how the industry keeps moving.” n