Original article by Christopher Tredger, Portals editor.
Cape Town-based biometric company, iiDENTIFii, has launched its remote face verification and authentication platform on the Microsoft Azure Marketplace, a digital store offering ready-to-use software and services for the Azure cloud environment.
Founded in 2018, iiDENTIFii primarily targets global enterprises, with a particular focus on the financial services sector in the Middle East and Africa (MEA) region. Lance Fanaroff, co-founder and Chief Strategy Officer of iiDENTIFii, notes that their presence on the Azure Marketplace will allow the company to offer secure and seamless customer onboarding while ensuring compliance with strict regulatory standards and protecting against advanced digital threats.
The iiDENTIFii platform is equipped with cutting-edge 3D and 4D liveness detection technology, ensuring that users are genuinely present during authentication, rather than relying on a static image or video. Liveness detection works by analyzing a person’s facial features. iiDENTIFii explains that by evaluating the depth and dimensions of the face, the system can prevent spoofing attempts, such as using photos or videos to deceive the system, confirming that the face belongs to a living person.
The 4D liveness detection technology extends beyond 3D by incorporating the time dimension into the analysis, adding dynamic factors to the verification process. It tracks how a user’s face reflects specific sequences of light over time, identifying subtle changes like facial movements and expressions, making it highly effective against advanced attacks such as deepfakes and replay attacks.
A digital replay attack occurs when a criminal intercepts authentication tokens or messages to gain unauthorized access to accounts, conduct fraudulent transactions, or impersonate someone. Typically, the attacker captures valid communication between two parties and reuses it later.
“For instance, if someone sends a request to transfer funds, an attacker could intercept that request and resend it to initiate an unauthorized transfer. These attacks don’t require advanced skills, as they depend mainly on the ability to capture and resend valid messages rather than decrypting them. The recipient might struggle to detect the malicious intent behind the replayed data, as trust has been established in previous communications, making replay attacks particularly dangerous,” the company elaborates.
iiDENTIFii’s innovative solutions have earned several awards, including the MTN App of the Year in 2021 and the KPMG Tech Innovator in Africa in 2022. The platform is recognized for its capability to identify individuals from a wide range of ethnic backgrounds.
The company has formed partnerships with multiple tier 1 African banks and signed an agreement with Tarsus Distribution to further promote its facial authentication technology in the African market.
Earlier this year, iiDENTIFii was recognized as a Luminary in the Prism Financial Services report.
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