Biometric Encyclopedia

Identity Proofing

Identity proofing is the process of establishing that a claimed identity corresponds to a real, unique person, and that the individual presenting it is genuinely that person. It typically takes place at enrollment, and everything that follows depends on getting it right.

Proofing is often confused with authentication. Proofing asks who this person is and whether they can prove it. Authentication asks whether this is the same person who enrolled. Weak proofing undermines every authentication that follows, because the system will faithfully re-authenticate whoever enrolled in the first place, including a fraudster.

NIST SP 800-63A-4 separates proofing into three stages:

  • Resolution: collecting enough attributes to distinguish one individual from everyone else. A name alone resolves to thousands of people; a name, date of birth, and document number usually resolve to one.
  • Validation: confirming the evidence is genuine and current. This is where document verification sits.
  • Verification: confirming the evidence belongs to the person presenting it. This is where face matching and liveness detection operate.

A process that validates a document but never verifies the holder proves only that a genuine passport exists, not that the person presenting it is its rightful holder.

Remote proofing is harder than in-person proofing because everything between the person and the server becomes an attack surface. Presentation attacks hold an artifact up to the camera. Digital injection attacks bypass the camera entirely, feeding synthetic imagery into the data stream, so the arriving imagery can be difficult for some liveness technologies to detect.

Identity Proofing vs Identity Verification

The two terms are often used interchangeably. Under NIST SP 800-63A-4, identity verification is one stage within identity proofing, confirming that the evidence belongs to the person presenting it. In the identity industry, “identity verification” is also used more broadly to describe the end-to-end process. Read the full comparison of proofing versus verification here.

Where iProov Fits in Identity Proofing

In a typical remote onboarding journey, document verification establishes that an identity document is genuine, face matching determines whether the person matches the photograph on that document, and liveness detection establishes that the biometric capture comes from a real person who is genuinely present at the time of verification.

iProov provides the biometric verification and liveness capabilities used within this process and for subsequent authentication. Dynamic Liveness uses Flashmark, a patented sequence of coded illuminations, as a passive challenge-response factor. Because the sequence is generated fresh per session and cannot be predicted, imagery recorded or generated beforehand will not carry the expected response.

These capabilities can be combined with document verification and other identity technologies from partners to support an end-to-end identity verification journey.

Learn More About Identity Proofing

Identity Proofing Frequently Asked Questions

What is identity proofing?

Identity proofing is the process of establishing that a claimed identity belongs to a real, unique person and that the person presenting it is genuinely that individual. NIST SP 800-63A-4 defines three stages: resolution, validation, and verification.

What is the difference between identity proofing and identity verification?

Identity proofing is the broader process of establishing confidence in a claimed identity. Under NIST SP 800-63A-4, identity verification is one stage within that process, confirming that the identity evidence belongs to the person presenting it. In the identity industry, however, “identity verification” is also commonly used more broadly to describe the end-to-end process of verifying a person’s identity.