DHS RIVR results suggest most ID document validation disastrously ineffective

The results of the identity document validation track within the 2025 Remote Identity Validation Rally are sobering. They indicate that of the seven anonymized identity document validation subsystems tested at the Maryland Test Facility (MdTF) for DHS’ Science and Technology Directorate (S&T), several are highly ineffective, and none are robust.

A single vendor’s ID document validation technology met the target set for security, as measured by false acceptance rate, and another met the goal for useability, as expressed by false rejection rate.

ID documents from Maryland and California, and fraudulent documents supplied through a collaboration with the Department of Homeland Security’s Homeland and Security Investigations (DHS HSI) lab.

S&T set “thresholds” at which to consider the system effective, and a more stringent “goal” for each metric.

Four of the seven subsystems tested met the goal for system error rate. Four did not meet the threshold for FRR, and five fell short in FAR. In other words, most systems let too few legitimate IDs through, even more passed too many fraudulent IDs, and six of seven fell short on one or both sides of the assessment.

DVS 6 returned results which met the threshold for FRR, and the evaluation’s goal for SER and FAR, making it the unequivocal best performer of those tested.

Only one other DVS, number 3, met the threshold set for FAR, at just below 5.7 percent, and DVS 5, the only subsystem with an FRR below 1 percent (at 0.6 percent), had an FAR of 13.8 percent. But DVS 3 was also the only system that failed to meet the threshold for SER.

DVS 4 posted an FRR above 97 percent, suggesting that at least it should block many fraud attempts, but it also posted an FAR above 10 percent.

The selfie match portion of RIVR was far more encouraging, with five of 16 submitted systems meeting the biometric matching effectiveness goals, and 10 meeting the thresholds.

The previous running of RIVR, back when it was known as RIVTD, included 12 participants in the document validation track. Detailed results were not released, but S&T said they “gave companies clear targets for improvement.”

An IJCB 2025 competition on presentation attack detection (PAD) for ID cards found document spoofs remain challenging. Incode won the track related to generalized spoof protection.

Article Topics

biometrics  |  DHS S&T  |  digital identity  |  document verification  |  identity document  |  Maryland Test Facility (MdTF)  |  remote identity proofing  |  Remote Identity Validation Rally (RIVR)