Latin America. HID Global recently announced its entry into the market for mobile citizen IDs that can be carried on smartphones, building on the success of the company's award-winning solutions that have demonstrated the benefits of mobility in a wide variety of secure identification applications.
The HID goID platform for mobile IDs enables the carrying of driver's licenses and other government IDs on smartphones, which become multifunctional devices for receiving, presenting and authenticating mobile IDs with the highest level of privacy protection. This marks a new era in which people will be able to calmly employ their smartphones as secure and reliable IDs, and governments will be able to achieve a higher level of convenience in issuing IDs and expand their relationships with citizens.
"Mobile IDs will simplify people's lives, equip them with more applications and increase their confidence to use digital IDs," predicted Rob Haslam, vice president and executive director of HID Global's Government ID division. "As the first solution to enable the convenient yet secure issuance and reception of credentials over a wireless network, the HID goID™ platform inaugurates a completely new category of citizen IDs. Governments in different parts of the world are already implementing HID Global's technology in major programs, such as the U.S. green card, the Irish passport data sheet, and the Angolan national ID, among others. HID goID lays the foundation for also guiding the industry's evolution towards mobile IDs."
The HID goID platform for mobile IDs, powered by HID Global's innovative Seos technology, goes much further and enables instant provisioning of IDs, over a wireless network, and easy access to government information services in the cloud with peace of mind that all transactions are secure and reliable. This ensures that all transactions related to the issuance, management and presentation of credentials using mobile phones are carried out in an environment with a high level of security, in a closed circuit, and protected by end-to-end encryption.
Seos technology has already demonstrated the transformative power of mobile IDs in numerous apps, and there is a growing demand for this service to become the equivalent of a digital wallet to carry various IDs linked to the user's unique and true identity. A survey conducted by Zogby Analytics among 18- to 34-year-olds who have smartphones revealed that 39 percent would like to corroborate their identity with a digital ID instead of showing a driver's license. By carrying IDs on smartphones, citizens have control over the data they reveal in different situations, for example, they have the option to show only their photograph and age.
HID Global is currently collaborating with national governments and state and provincial entities in charge of driver's licenses in the possibility of launching goID™ pilots that explore the specific objectives and requirements of the implementation of the platform in each jurisdiction. With this solution it will no longer be necessary for people to stand in long lines to process and renew cards.
The following are some of the priority areas of interest: preventing fraud through authentication through secure channels; optimize flexibility for online authentication in case the battery of the citizen's phone runs out; simplify the issuance of identifications through wireless supply, already tested in universities, banks, hotels, hospitals and other institutions that take advantage of Seos® technology; and protect privacy by utilizing the smartphone's Bluetooth connection so that users can electronically present their credentials without physically handing over their smartphones.
