Attain Insight Intrinsic is the first Identity solution to introduce high fidelity anonymization for biometric data as a result of a significant innovation announced in early 2024.
Intrinsic uses a Biometric Privacy-Enhancing Technology (B-PET) called Search-Preserving Anonymization (SPAn) – a one-way transformation applied to biometric data that removes all Personally Identifiable information (PII), but still enables high-fidelity matching for identity verification, digital wallets, people counting or classification, and many other purposes. The removal of PII returns public trust, reduces custodial overhead, regulatory obligations, and cybersecurity risks associated with biometric data.
Intrinsic’s platform of modular components can help your organization meet a wide range of identity needs from marketing to authentication to public safety, with or without the use of anonymized biometrics. Intrinsic is a collection of integrated components available individually or together to build a solution that addresses the Identity needs of every organization.
Here are the main areas where Intrinsic can help:
Intrinsic is a unique technology that enables public safety organizations to collect and share anonymized data to find hidden relationships that would take thousands of staff hours to determine manually. More importantly, information collection can happen without the delays or the complexity of authorization procedures required for Person of Interest (POI) surveillance. The practice of inter-organizational data sharing faces significant restrictions due to legal and regulatory constraints, technical obstacles, and security risks, but using anonymized data to relate individuals between agencies avoids these barriers.
Biometric data has many applications due to its unique and irreplicable nature. It is an important source of information because unlike many other types of identifying information, biometrics are difficult to manipulate. However, while beneficial for many applications from public safety to authentication and identity verification, there are growing concerns about the security risks of retaining personal information. These include unauthorized use, human error, infiltration by organized crime, and unauthorized sharing, particularly with technologies like facial recognition, automated web scraping and artificial intelligence risks. Attain Insight Intrinsic offers a Privacy First solution that can anonymize biometric data and preserve match accuracy while mitigating the majority of privacy concerns, regulatory and other risks, and associated costs.
Intrinsic’s optional Identity and Relationship Resolution module incorporates a proven identity and analytics capability that establishes relationships between entities, events, places and timelines in collected data. Advanced recognition algorithms, analytics and event monitoring provide powerful intelligence into the threats and opportunities that might exist in your organization, your customers, your community, or entities your organization deals with. With added support for biometric data, sources such as facial recognition feeds can form an important part of identifying non-obvious relationships between individuals and entities.
Intrinsic is a new and innovative platform of modules that includes Privacy First principles through its ability to anonymize user-identifying information as a first step, whether biometric or not. Everything from driver’s licenses to facial recognition biometric data can be anonymized in a way that still supports high fidelity matching, but does not retain personally identifying information (PII). According to GDPR, anonymized data is low risk from a security perspective because it cannot be ‘decoded’ or linked back to any specific individual, meaning that an individual’s privacy has been protected whether stored in a cell phone, digital wallet, or by an organization or government entity.
Biometric data is increasingly being used for authentication and identity verification because it is difficult to falsify, and capturing biometric data is becoming more and more cost effective. However, biometric capture is also highly sensitive from a security perspective because of the risk of misuse when biometric samples fall into the wrong hands or are coerced from staff by organized crime groups. Attain Insight Intrinsic includes the world’s first PII removal component that removes PII from a biometric sample, but still supports high-fidelity matching for authentication and identity verification.
Further, anonymized biometrics become useless if accidentally exposed, shared, or stolen, since there is no discernible back link to an individual, and enable new applications for biometric information while meeting data minimization and proportionality privacy requirements.
Many organizations want to understand the different audiences that use or visit their facilities, stores, or offices (e.g. whether a person is a worker, an existing customer or someone new). Traditional techniques can be problematic because of their use and storage of personally identifying information. Attain Insight Intrinsic allows organizations to implement anonymized identity classification, which will confirm if a person is a member of a classification without retaining or disclosing the individual’s identity.
In addition, the technology offers the capability to accurately count the number of people present in a retail environment or public space and the number of unique individuals, all using anonymized matching. This feature enables organizations to gain valuable insights into customer or people flow without compromising privacy. Our solution ensures secure, anonymized identification and reliable people-counting capabilities in retail and other settings.
Attain Insight is a member of the Biometrics Institute, supporting the responsible, ethical, and privacy-preserving use of biometric technologies worldwide.