Aware active and passive liveness tested in RIVR’s biometric PAD track

Aware is encouraged by its results in the face biometric Presentation Attack Detection (PAD) track of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security’s Remote Identity Validation Rally (DHS RIVR). Notably, the company submitted both active and passive liveness detection systems.

The Massachusetts-based biometrics company says its active liveness detection system (anonymized as A1) successfully blocked all class A and B spoof attacks, while its passive liveness (P2) blocked all class C attacks during the evaluation.

The RIVR program evaluates biometric identity verification technologies with human participants to better reflect real-world deployment conditions. It comes with performance goals and thresholds for several metrics, which, for PAD, include the Bona Fide Presentation Classification Error Rate (BPCER), Attack Presentation Classification Error Rate (APCER), satisfaction, and average transaction time for active, and average runtime for passive.

Both the active and passive versions of Aware Intelligent Liveness scored a BPCER under the strict usability threshold, meaning that the error rate of genuine images falsely rejected as presentation attacks was below five percent. The active liveness system also ranked in the top three in user satisfaction across iOS and Android and came second in average transaction time, just missing the evaluation’s goal. The passive system met RIVR’s usability threshold for average run time as well, but like all passive PAD systems except one, failed to meet the APCER threshold.

Earlier in March, Identy.io published its RIVR liveness track identity, showing strong results. The company met the goal in three metrics, but missed the BPCER threshold with an error rate of 6 percent. Paravision and Idemia Public Security also revealed their participation in Track 3, with the former the only biometric liveness provider meeting the BPCER goal by coming in below 0.5 percent, and the latter the only active PAD system to meet all performance thresholds.

The biometrics testing is a joint initiative between the DHS Science and Technology Directorate, Transportation Security Administration (TSA) and the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and is conducted at the Maryland Test Facility (MdTF).

“Programs like the DHS Remote Identity Validation Rally are essential to advancing trust in digital identity,” says Ajay Amlani, CEO of Aware. “By testing active liveness technologies against real-world attack scenarios, including those involving live human participants, DHS is helping raise the bar for the entire industry.”

Article Topics

Aware  |  biometric liveness detection  |  DHS S&T  |  Idemia Public Security  |  Identy  |  NIST  |  Paravision  |  presentation attack detection  |  Remote Identity Validation Rally (RIVR)  |  TSA