Socure appoints Matt Thompson to lead public sector biometrics, ID verification business

Socure has hired industry heavyweight Matt Thompson to be the company’s new general manager of Public Sector Solutions. In this role, Thompson will bring Socure’s biometrics and digital identity verification solutions along with best-practices from the private sector to the public sector to spur the company’s growth.

Thompson comes to Socure from Idemia, where he led the Civil and Digital Identity Business for North America, delivering biometrics capabilities like remote DMV enrollment to government agencies. Thompson is also a co-founder of ID.me, which has scored many contracts with U.S. public sector agencies since the pandemic began. He is president of the Kantara Initiative’s Board of Directors, and served as chair of the Identity Ecosystem Steering Group’s Management Counsel in support of the Obama administration’s National Strategy for Trusted Identities in Cyberspace.

He holds three patents in mobile biometric liveness detection, and tiered and third-party authentication.

“I believe that identity is the driver of government digital transformation. The public sector continues to move more interactions online while the proportion of those interactions that are risky is increasing and has been exacerbated by the pandemic. This isn’t a cresting wave — it is a rising flood of interactions, and the legacy ways of determining who is on the other end of an interaction for fraud prevention and inclusion aren’t sufficient,” comments Thompson. “My goal is to replicate the success Socure has had in the commercial space into the public sector, because we have the industry’s most accurate and inclusive identity verification and fraud detection platform in the market to answer that need.”

In addition to his experience in biometrics and digital identity, Thompson is also a member of the board of directors and chair of the audit committee for America’s largest support organization for homeless veterans.

“The entire Socure team is excited to partner with Matt to build the deep and long-lasting government partnerships that are required to solve the identity verification and fraud challenges that are rampant in the public sector today,” states Johnny Ayers, founder and CEO of Socure.  “He brings a tremendous wealth of experience and market credibility to this role and shares a personal vision that it’s our civic responsibility to be the first to equitably verify 100 percent of good identities in real-time while completely eliminating identity fraud for every transaction on the internet.”

Thompson discussed the importance of upgrading government digital identity verification systems with Biometric Update in April.

Article Topics

appointments  |  biometrics  |  digital identity  |  identity verification  |  Socure