Digimarc Corporation announced that its Digimarc ID Validation Suite (IDVS) system has been updated to support new homeland security requirements for improving the validation of identity for federal employees and contractors who have access to federal buildings and information systems. Digimarc IDVS was introduced last month to help issuers of government IDs meet the goals of the REAL ID Act legislation for enhancing driver license security.

The Federal Information Processing Standard-201 (FIPS-201) for the Personal Identity Verification of Federal Employees and Contractors (PIV) was developed to satisfy the requirements of Homeland Security Presidential Directive-12 (HSPD 12), which calls for enhancing the identification and authentication of federal employees and contractors. This requires that federal government agencies have the operational capability to collect, verify and archive the documents presented to establish the identity of all current and new federal employees and contractors by Oct. 27, 2005. Such documents may include U.S. driver licenses or state-issued IDs, passports, Social Security cards, military IDs, resident alien cards, travel documents, etc. All current and new employees and contractors of federal agencies are subject to this new policy to ensure that credentials are properly issued.

"Ensuring that federal worker IDs are issued only to legitimate holders is critical to securing our country's federal government facilities and systems," said J. Scott Carr, divisional president, Digimarc. "Federal agencies are now required to authenticate and archive the identity documents of tens of thousands of current and new federal workers and contractors. Digimarc's ID Validation Suite is uniquely positioned to enable those agencies to meet FIPS-201 requirements with a flexible, open authentication and archiving solution that can be integrated into multiple workflows." Carr added, "Our IDVS solution is a comprehensive, modular, ID authentication and archiving system designed specifically to enhance homeland security, authenticate identity, improve citizen safety and combat identity theft and fraud."