Governments worldwide are increasingly calling for powerful multi-purpose ID credentials that will cost-effectively maintain the highest levels of security while addressing secondary objectives related to more rapid processing, facility access control and e-government services. In this WHTI-compliant card, the RFID facilitates the processing of individuals at busy land border crossings, while the tamperproof optical security media provides unparalleled visual and physical security countermeasures against counterfeiting and fraud.

LaserCard has also introduced an optical security media-based credential that is compliant with European Union Regulations defining Community-wide uniform standards for Foreign Resident Permit credentials. Manufacturing processes enable the combination of an ICAO-compliant chip, mandated by EU standards, with optical security media, which is formally approved within the standards as a supplementary “national security feature.”

For those European nations that incorporate an optional contact chip for e-government applications into their foreign resident permits, LaserCard offers either a finished card or chip-ready card stock suitable for chip embedding by a third party. The card design takes account of the need to accommodate three advanced technologies while ensuring that the contact chip is located in the ISO-standard location on the reverse side of the card as defined by the EU standards.

These new standards-compliant credentials are the result of LaserCard’s manufacturing techniques to combine optical security media with the most commonly used machine-readable technologies such as bar codes, optical character recognition, contact chips, contactless chips, RFID tags and magnetic stripes. Technology inclusiveness of this kind ensures compatibility with widely installed infrastructures while capitalizing on the optical media for essential secure visual and physical identification plus tamperproof portable data storage.

LaserCard also is touting some advances in physical security features on the credential. Under real world conditions, the majority of ID credentials are still authenticated by human inspection since automatic readers are not typically available at most inspection and transaction points. Credential examiners therefore need a highly reliable means of visually authenticating a document and identifying its holder. The latest advances in LaserCard’s optical security media have strengthened this “at-a-glance” credential authentication and put the possibility of credible forgeries even further beyond the reach of counterfeiters.

LaserCard’s recent innovations include advances in secure imaging, such as ultra-high resolution (24,000 bpi) security artwork, a photo-like cardholder image laser etched into the optical security media (LaserCard’s Personalized Embedded HologramHD), and other new features, such as complex background images that permanently lock the security elements together to enhance visual authentication. In addition, LaserCard’s optical security media offers the capability of covertly interleaving visual and digital information to provide very advanced forensic credential and data authentication. These advances together provide exceptional protection against tampering and counterfeiting.