Digital innovation without robust digital security is like a time bomb waiting to explode because fraudsters will exploit any loopholes that exist in your business’ security system. There is a growing need for robust Know Your Customer (KYC), Anti Money Laundering (AML), and fraud prevention solutions that help detect and reduce the risk of fraud.

One such solution is liveness checks. In this article, you will understand what liveness checks are, how they work, their importance, and how they help improve your digital security and mitigate fraud.  

What Are Liveness Checks?

Liveness checks, also known as ‘anti-spoofing’ or ‘liveness detection’, are a type of biometric verification solution that helps curb fraud by ensuring that a live user is present during the verification process. 

You know how in bank heists and spy movies, an actor breaks into a secure vault using a copy of someone’s biometric information, like fingerprint or retina? That doesn’t happen in real life because liveness checks distinguish between artificial and real users. 

They ensure that the biometric information being received is coming from an authentic source like an actual thumbprint, eye, or face and not from a fake, recreated, or computer-generated source.

How Do Liveness Checks Work?

It starts with the liveness check system prompting the user to perform specific actions in front of the camera. The goal is to prove that they are an authentic person and to discourage fraudsters. The prompted actions can include smiling, blinking, turning their head, etc.

While the user performs the actions, the system scans their face and other relevant biometric information and checks against a database to confirm if the user is genuine. 

During the scanning process, the system can detect deep fakes and AI-generated faces with motion analysis and by watching for any inconsistencies in the background, depth, edges, facial expressions, and skin texture. 

The Importance of Liveness Checks 

A significant difference between liveness checks and other identity verification methods is that with liveness checks, we are confident that a genuine user is at the other end of the verification process.

Bots can easily pose as people, and documents can be forged, but it is difficult to bypass the video KYC process of liveness checks, making them a more secure means of verifying and onboarding legitimate customers.

Even though liveness checks are effective in spotting bots, deep fakes, and advanced spoofing attacks, you should not rely on them alone. Instead, it is best to combine them with other KYC checks, thereby improving your layers of security. This way, even if fraudsters can bypass document verification, address verification, and government data verification, they won’t get past the liveness check.

Not only do liveness checks improve your digital security, but they also improve onboarding rates because they add little or no friction to your onboarding process. It is vital to work with an identity verification provider that allows you to create unique customer onboarding flows and combine multiple verification methods.

Types of Liveness Checks

While there are different forms of liveness checks, these are the most common.

Active Liveness Checks

Active liveness checks require the user to perform specific actions in front of the camera to prove they are real persons. The actions could range from turning their heads left or right to placing an ID document beside their faces. These actions reduce the chances of fraudsters gaining access because they can not easily be faked or replicated.

A demerit of active liveness checks is the amount of friction involved due to the different actions the user has to perform.

Passive Liveness Checks

Unlike active liveness checks that require users to perform challenges, passive liveness checks occur in the background without requiring user input. Instead of users performing actions, passive liveness checks use AI and motion analysis to inspect the user’s background, skin tone, behaviour, blinking, pupil dilation, involuntary user actions, and other biometric characteristics to determine if the person behind the camera is a real user or an animated face.  

Some consider passive checks to be more secure because they happen in the background, meaning that users don’t know when the checks happen and cannot bypass them. These are frictionless forms of liveness checks, and they can help speed up the user onboarding process.

Hybrid Liveness Checks

Hybrid solutions combine active and passive checks to form a less intrusive solution. Businesses often choose hybrid checks because it is the middle ground that ensures the user performs security actions while reducing the friction they encounter in the verification process. Hybrid liveness checks are a great way to ensure your digital security while providing a seamless customer onboarding experience. 

The Benefits of Implementing Liveness Checks

Speed

Liveness checks speed up the verification process by providing instant feedback to users. With other methods like document verification, a compliance officer often has to inspect and verify the documents in a backend. This process can take more than 24hrs depending on the number of users being verified.

Customers who get frustrated by this wait time will switch to a competitor with a much faster verification process. Liveness checks provide real-time feedback on the verification process and reduce wait time for approvals.   

Fraud Prevention

Liveness checks discourage users from committing crimes. Users are less likely to perform criminal activities when you know who they are. Liveness checks eliminate the anonymity that bad actors use to stay hidden and perform fraud. 

Liveness checks also reduce the chances of fraudsters getting past your security system with tricks like identity farming, bots, spoofing attacks, and deep fakes.  

How Dojah’s Liveness Check Solution Can Boost Your Digital Security

Dojah’s liveness check solution reduces the risk of supporting attacks and fortifies your digital security. It uses artificial intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML) algorithms to detect bots and fake biometrics, thereby keeping fraudsters from posing as legitimate users and accessing your system.

Sign up to start leveraging this and our other KYC and identity verification offerings. You can also contact us if you have any questions or schedule a demo session.

Also, explore our website and documentation to learn more about our product offerings.