Mitek launches MiVIP platform to fight identity theft

A new easy-to-deploy identity platform was announced this week to help address growing concerns about identity theft. The Mitek Verified Identity Platform (MiVIP) melds the company’s mobile technologies with those of its recent acquisitions to give its customers flexible control over their consumers’ experiences.

With MiVIP, customers have the ability to orchestrate the full range of authentication technologies offered by Mitek, including biometrics, geolocation, politically exposed persons (PEPS) and sanctions, and bureau checks. Those technologies, together with those from recent acquisitions HooYu and ID R&D, enable MiVIP to address the security of the entire transaction lifecycle, according to Mitek.

Faster verification and onboarding

Mitek Vice President for Product Management Chris Briggs explains that the company’s Mobile Verify capture and verification technologies have been integrated into MiVIP for what he claims to be fast, accurate capture of identity documents and biometrics. That can help remove friction in the onboarding process. For example, an organization might require a simple database check before onboarding a customer. “If an end user passed on all aspects of the database check, they would immediately be onboarded,” Briggs says.

“Only if a red flag was thrown would an additional verification process be required,” Briggs continues. “This means the verification process is dynamic and only requires the end user to take the minimum number of verification steps to meet the business’s risk requirements. That means verification has as little friction, and goes as fast as possible, for the end-user.”

ID theft a big problem

According to Mitek, it has made MiVIP both easy to use and deploy. The platform’s user interface allows a business to choose the verification criteria it wants to apply to customers and the order they’re applied. From a single location, a user can toggle verification signals — such as database checks, PEPS and sanctions, facial biometrics, liveness detection, ID document validation, geolocation, fraud alerts, digital footprint analysis, and others—and set the order for their application.

Mitek also claims that it has improved deployment of the solution. Instead of days or weeks, it can be up and running in hours through the use of its low code/no code architecture.

Identity theft is a widespread problem in the United States, according to the National Council on Identity Theft Protection, with 50% of the nation’s citizens victimized by ID thieves between 2020 and 2022. It adds that in 2020 alone, ID theft cost companies $13 billion.

Research and advisory firm Gartner estimates that by the end of 2022, 80% of organizations will be using document-centric identity proofing as part of their onboarding workflows. By 2023, 75% of organizations will be using a single vendor with strong identity orchestration capabilities and connections to many other third parties for identity proofing and affirmation, compared to 15% in 2020.