Video: Trust Starts Here: Boosting Accuracy with Biometrically Verified Identity Data | Duration: 3012s | Summary: Trust Starts Here: Boosting Accuracy with Biometrically Verified Identity Data

Transcript for "Trust Starts Here: Boosting Accuracy with Biometrically Verified Identity Data": Thank you all for joining us for today's presentation on trust starts here, boosting accuracy with biometrically verified identity data. My name is Jennifer Gladstone, and I'll be your host and moderator for this discussion. Now as people continue to log on, let's cover some housekeeping items. We will have a q and a session at the end of this presentation. As our speaker goes through the presentation, if you have any questions or want additional information on a topic, please type your request into the q and a section on the right side of your control panel. We'll address all of those at the end of the presentation. Shield Screening is an HRCI recertification provider, and this presentation is approved for 1 hour of general HR credit. By Friday, you'll receive a follow-up email with a certificate of completion and the HRCI program number as well as a recording of the entire presentation. Now that we've gotten those items out of the way, let me introduce you to today's speakers. First, we have Sebastian Mellon. Sebastian is the CEO of Cerebrum, a leader in credential technologies that ensures data privacy, security, and portability. Next up, we have Vu Do, VP of compliance at Shield Screening. Vu is a long time screening professional with 20 years of experience in compliance. At Shield Screening, she leads internal compliance operations and focuses on client Fair Credit Reporting Act Education. Now the last thing before we get into the discussion, the legal disclaimer. The content of our presentation is shared for informational purposes only and does not constitute legal advice, either expressed or implied. You should work with a qualified counsel to understand your legal obligations. And that is it for me. So let's turn it over to Sebastian to tell us all about Cerebrum. Sebastian? Alright. Fantastic. Hello there, everybody. Hope you can all, hear me well, and thanks for for listening in. I think we've got a pretty exciting, webinar here for you today. First off, just as a very brief background of myself, I've got a background in in tech startups, and I'm a technologist first. But I'm really excited to share knowledge information about ID verification and how that can improve the applicant experience and really lead to significant improvements in your screening program today. I wanna start about the the presentation by talking about something pretty straightforward, which is that safety is pretty fundamental to any community. Right? And it's especially true for the workplace or anyone that you're screening. And there's something really important to understand, which is that it only takes one incident to change everything. And that's true whether you're hiring a contractor or managing a health care facility or leading a remote team. And across the board, risk mitigation is about preventing that one bad actor. Right? That's why we perform background screening in the first place. And our position is that biometric identity verification, which is what we're talking about today, is a cornerstone of a solid risk mitigation and compliance strategy. So look at what we're facing today. The numbers on identity fraud in particular are pretty sobering. We've got a 20% increase in synthetic identity fraud since 2022, especially with that remote hiring wave. We've got a 75% increase in fraud attempts that are linked to AI assisted forgery. This is something that with the rise of chat gpt, generative AI, we've seen a significant rise in. And then we've got another $3,000,000,000 loss due to identity theft annually. And, you know, beyond those numbers, there's a more immediate reality. This is a little bit more personal. I'm a recent first time parent, and it's hit me pretty instinctively. You know, when I'm gonna trust someone to take care of my daughter, I wanna make sure that they're verified and that their background checked. And the same is true in a workplace. You wanna know that everyone that you're hiring or that you're trusting with your business data or your information is checked. It only takes that one oversight. You know, at financial services, we've seen instances where one fraudulent hire led to 1,000,000 of dollars of theft. In health care, we've seen unverified contractors get access to facilities, compromise patient safety, lead to massive litigation and and payouts. In a remote work environment, having synthetic identities could lead to massive data breaches or losses of revenue. We even had a crazy story come out not that long ago about a North Korean group of tech workers who infiltrated, government contractors in the US, all due to a lack of thorough identity verification. So hope that paints the picture for you today. We have very advanced AI technology. Fraudsters have tools that we could not have imagined them having a few years ago. And there's a lot of threats rising and and evolving. Right? Deepfakes, AI generated documents, what have you. So it's important that we keep up. I think we'll go to the the next page here. So Cerebrum is fundamentally a risk mitigation technology company. And today, we're gonna be talking about one of our products, really our our flagship product, which is VID, or Verified Identity Documentation. And we'll also talk more generally about the benefits of performing identity verification in the hiring process. So first of all, we'll start off with what what VID is. And I think that's the the next slide here. So Vid is a tool that increases trust and confidence in the hiring process. There's really a few components to Vid. The first one is a really advanced biometric identity verification product. The second one is that we integrated that identity verification product into the rest of the background screening flow. So what's really neat is we don't bifurcate the applicant workflow. Everything sits together in one process, and that's really important for applicant experience and, you know, positive candidate experience. And then at the end of the screening process, we can optionally give the user a digital wallet that shows a proof of their screening status. And this is something that we've seen increasingly in areas with, you know, contractors, construction, energy, health care, where having, proof of your screening status on your person is very valuable. So VID is a digital identity wallet that increases trust and confidence in the hiring process. Wanna talk a little bit about, on the next slide, what exactly we do in terms of identity verification. So I've mentioned identity verification. You might be thinking, you know, what is this guy talking about? Okay. I I know, you know, generally, people might have identity documents. Right? That might be a driver's license or a passport. What does verification mean? So in the bid process, we do biometric identity verification. And what that means is we first check the liveness of the person going through the process. So typically, if you're filling out a form or you're uploading a photo of an ID card into a form, you're not actually verifying that it's you, the owner of the identity document, who's sitting there in front of the computer. That's what biometric liveness detection does. 1st step is prove who you are, prove that you're really sitting in front of the computer. To do that, we use a very advanced facial recognition system that takes just a couple of seconds. We have the user perform a prompt, and we make sure that they're actually sitting there. They turn their head, move their face around, something that you've probably done while setting up face ID if you have an Apple device, just that we're doing it for purposes of identity verification. This helps us protect against things like deep fakes, which are AI generated images of a person's face, that are now used often in in fraudulent attempts to gain access to systems. This also prevents other issues where you might have a real person, but, you know, you wanna make sure that they're not being shown through a video screen or it's not a recorded video of someone on a device. So we combine that with a document scan, and that's very straightforward. We use super, super advanced technology. I won't get too deep into it, but we verify the identity document, and we check for things like holograms, watermarks, security features. We decode the barcode on the back of the card and match it with the front of the card. And if you're looking for, an ID verification provider, you wanna make sure that they have those two components, biometrics as well as secure document scanning and verification. Because together, those two approaches provide a really comprehensive, identity validation workflow. Identity verification isn't just another service. It's, in our opinion, the foundation that all background checks should build off of, and that's for a few reasons. You get better security, a better user experience, and you get confirmed accuracy of data. And if you think about it, you know, how valuable is an expensive background check even if you're not, you know, paying a lot, even if you're not a 100% certain that you know who you're screening? Analogy I always give is it's kind of like building a super advanced security system, and then you leave your front door unlocked. Right? You want to know who you're screening, and you wanna verify that you're screening the right person. And biometric identity validation provides that certainty and assurance that you can't get in any other way. So don't compromise on this this fundamental step. Think we can go to the next slide now here. Oh, oops. Sorry about that. So in addition to the identity verification process, which is integrated into the screening workflow, there's a lot of value to identity wallets. And we've seen just identity verification alone result in some pretty significant benefits. So this is data we sourced from other providers in the industry, from from industry reporting, up to a 90% reduction in fraud losses because you're verifying who you're actually checking. This is especially important in remote work. We've seen faster processing times. Because you get that data accuracy, all of the information is scanned off of an identity document. The person isn't gonna be mixing up their date of birth. They're typing in their first and last name incorrectly or typing in an incorrect address. When you're doing identity verification, you always have that strong assurance that the data came from a government source, and that results in those faster processing times. And then in some cases, we've even seen savings in insurance premiums, with implementing that identity verification as an upfront step. And what's really exciting is that all of this together, that enhanced security, that that better feeling of trust in the hiring process, and the data accuracy, leads to higher completion rates. And with bid, we actually see completion rates up to 96%, which is 15 to 20% higher in some cases than we've seen with previous solutions. And that's just because the process is more streamlined and the data is all verified, which is really a win win. Okay. Cool. I hope that gives you a background in kind of a high level overview of identity verification, what a digital wallet can be, and then we'll jump into the demo. So I'm gonna pass along. I think this should hopefully pop up here. And The key to connection in today's world is trust. Welcome to vid, the app designed to foster trust in any community. In just 2 minutes, Vid will verify your identity and order your background check. These credentials will ensure you're recognized and trusted wherever you go. Your organization will invite you to use bid by emailing you a personalized QR code. After scanning this code, bid will recognize you and prepopulate your email address during account creation. After verifying your email, you'll be welcomed to your organization. Now it's time to get your identity verified with BID. VIT uses liveness detection and machine learning to ensure you match your government issued ID. The best part, it only takes a few seconds to complete. VIT will start with liveness detection by asking you to blink slowly, then take a selfie. Next, you'll scan the front and back of your ID. It automatically pulls your information, but you can always add more details if your ID doesn't show a recent change in name or address. Last step is to provide your Social Security Number. With our industry leading security measures, advanced encryption, and multi factor authentication, your data is kept safe, private, and secure. You did it. You just created your first verifiable credential with Bit. Your identity has been verified and your community is growing, safer, and more trusted one credential at a time. Can you hear me? Perfect. Cool. Alright. We're back. Awesome. So as you saw, that is a very streamlined process. We put a lot of work, from a technology perspective into making VIT as seamless and as fluid as possible. We really believe in having the best possible applicant and hiring experience. And this is where identity verification goes beyond the fear and scariness of how do we defend ourselves against fraud, how do we make sure that we're hiring good people. And it goes into other benefits, which is really that streamlined, more accurate hiring process that also brings along those benefits of lowering fraud and speeding up that onboarding. And we really believe in the value of Vid also for building candidate trust. This is something that goes along with everything we talked about previously, but we've seen an increased, number of candidates who report high trust, high satisfaction with the process because they know they're using a safe verified app. They can tell that it's a good user experience, and that also boosts their confidence in their employer. We've also seen some employers start touting that they've been verify their employees, And that's another benefit to bid is that you can now say, hey, our employees are ID verified, and we do that as an upfront part of our hiring process. ID verification and background checks go perfectly together. So I wanna talk, briefly also about the wallet. So I think I can click forward here. Cool. This is, the final part of it. Once you've completed that background check, you've done your identity verification. Vid is also a digital wallet that can store credentials. Now what does that mean? You might say, you know, what is a credential? A credential can really be any kind of information. In this case, we're talking about things like background screening results, licenses, professional trainings, other forms of verification. All of those pieces of data can sit in the bid wallet and be verified by another user just by scanning a QR code. And the benefit of this is that it makes all of those credentials portable, immediately verifiable, and provides a really secure basis to do things like access management. I have a few examples that I always love to talk about. One of my favorite is a health facility that we work with that had a, student network. And they had a student come in who actually was not a medical student, made it through the hospital, went to every room, and caused a number of legal issues for them because they were able to gain that access. And they came to us and said, hey. How can we verify people and make sure that we know who's coming into the hospital? And especially in these areas where you've got contractors or students or people going in and out of facilities, having an immediately verifiable background check and identity record is incredibly valuable. And that's a natural result of all of the rest of the bid process is that you get that identity wallet. There's a few other examples like, you know, energy contractor networks that we've seen, examples in transportation and youth sports, etcetera. The applications for the wallet are really endless, but, the main point is that you can prove that you're actually background checked. So we jump ahead here to the final point. Again, with that wallet, you can verify identity and credentials on the spot immediately just by scanning the QR code. I'm gonna leave it there for that and then jump into the fun part, which is, I love to say this, risk prevention that makes sense. Now these numbers are, of course, not necessarily representative of every company or of your situation, but I just wanna talk a little bit about what Vid can do also in terms of ROI. Risk mitigation helps with a lot. On the first part, risk mitigation and identity verification helps eliminate screening reruns due to data errors. One of the most common complaints that we see is, hey, an applicant misentered data or put in information incorrectly. I need to correct it. That increases hiring time. It increases turnaround time, and it also costs money, if you're running a background check on data that was incorrectly entered. In addition, that prevents hiring fraudulent hires, and that's really the biggest line item here. One bad hire, one person who breaches data, one person who enters a facility they shouldn't have access to is too many and introduces a tremendous risk into your organization. Background screening is a cornerstone of a really strong verification program and a cornerstone of risk mitigation. But identity verification is critical to go along with it so that you know who your background screening. That's really why identity verification and then background screening are such a perfect match. And then there's some other benefits that we see as well. So as I mentioned earlier, increase decreased turnaround times through bid can also translate to faster times to hire. And in in the right industry, that can make a really big impact. And insurance premiums can go down as well in in certain scenarios when you can demonstrate that you have a very secure hiring program that includes strong identity verification. I always like to end it like this. It only takes one incident to create a crisis, and preventative measures are always more valuable than the fallout of that crisis. Along with all of the other benefits of vid, better applicant experience, better turnaround times, higher completion rates, we're huge advocates of implementing identity verification and vid into your screening process. I'm gonna go ahead and leave it there. I think we've got, final panel discussion slide here, and I think I may have some people coming up to join me. Hi, Sebastian. That's fantastic. It really was, Sebastian. Thank you. So Vu is with us now, and we'll go into a few panel questions. Are you guys ready? We are. Absolutely. Our first question, in addition to biometric identity verification, are there any additional advancements in the verification space? Sebastian, why don't we go to you for this one? Yeah. That's, I mean, that's a big question. It's a big question because there's there's a number of different, waves that are kinda coalescing together. The first one that we see everywhere again, identity verification, is a big it's a hot topic right now. It's kind of a cornerstone of screening. I just spent 20 minutes talking at you about how that works. But a big part of identity verification being successful is does it integrate well with the rest of the screening process? And this is somewhere where we we see friction a lot. Many providers out there, you'll have ID verification as a separate component, where you first go through maybe a web form, you complete your information, you fill it out, and then 20 minutes later, the candidate gets an e mail saying, hey, can we verify your identity? Then they have to go to another web link and do the same process all over again. For us, integrating that together into a single workflow, is one of the biggest advancements in bid. And one of the advancements that we see in the space is that, increasingly, candidate experience is the most important thing. Right? How do we keep our candidates happy, keep our applicants happy? And that integrated identity verification process is kind of a core. This the the second part is a little bit broader because it encompasses more than just ID verification, and it encompasses the whole world of generative AI. So if you've been alive for the past year, I'm sure you've seen a webinar or heard someone talk about AI in some context. AI is a really big topic, and it can mean a whole lot of things. We use AI just to do the facial recognition and and ID verification that we do. But AI also helps with things like auto capturing data from documents. And this is one of the places that where, we see big advancements in the space. We're continually improving bid, and we're releasing features, over the next few months that include, for example, AI auto capture. One of the pain points that we see in healthcare, in particular is that you might have an applicant going through a workflow and uploading 10 different documents, a medical license, vaccination cards, screening results, etcetera. And all of those pieces of information come in handwritten formats or different document formats where someone has to sit and manually key those into another system. And we see AI auto capture as a really big advantage there and something that we're working heavily on as well. So all of that together, I'd say, you know, integrated ID, AI, and then all of that together leads to an increased, candidate engagement rate, better adoption rates, 96 plus percent completion rate, and then the digital wallet on the back end, can be more accurate because it's using data that was fed in by these AI models and where humans didn't have to type them in and make data entry mistakes as they were doing it. So kind of a big answer there, but hope that, hope that covers it. Big answer, but they're all good things. So sounds great. Alright. Lou, I have a question for you. How does virtual biometric identification fit into current framework for background checks? Well, first of all, let me acknowledge, Sebastian, that the information that you shared, so exciting. Like, on behalf of employers and and as a compliance professional working with employers and and helping to consult as they put together these screening programs to prevent fraud, to have confidence and assurance about who they're bringing into their organizations. What a powerful tool, and what an exciting time to put that on the market and make it available. Right? And and and my answer is gonna lead into this when I talk about the excitement of a powerful tool new to the market. It's because thus far in our traditional screening mechanism, we are pretty constrained with respect to, a traditional model methodology. For the most part, the foundation of most background checks in the employment scenario is to rely on a social trace. And this is an aggregation of data from the credit bureaus and its credit header data. And so what you're relying on essentially is your applicant giving you information about themselves, telling them that this is me. I'm this Social Security number, or I'm this date of birth, and this is my name. And they may give you a copy, but the driver's license at some point, but you're gonna have to compare the information that comes back on the credit header data or social trace to what they give you. And and perhaps you may find discrepancies. Perhaps, you may find other information. Perhaps it doesn't line up. But then you have to work through the process of them providing explanation of, you know, why there is a discrepancy, how the other data may or may not line up. All this to say you're introducing some variables that don't point in a very black and white manner to the fact that is this or is this not you. Right? So I I think from that perspective, it it already puts an employer from a disadvantage. Here, you have a tool that's unequivocally telling you this is not a match, and we're doing things like we're relying on the verification or use that word very intentionally because I don't think that word can be put out there currently in a background screening model to say that a background check company or an employer can rely on, you know, validating or verifying, with the existing tools. That's because other than the SSA, Social Security Administration, we do we are not in the capacity to say that we have that. But now that you are looking at, comparing and validate that information through government issued ID, through aliveness detection, you know, through that technology, it's really exciting. So all that to say, it forms a strong foundation before you even kick off the background check. This is a process that precedes the background check itself. So you've already got a very strong foundation upon which you can build the actual background check. Now imagine if you can determine with with, you know, great confidence that this is not the person that you thought you were signing up, and then you don't have to proceed or you you work out you know, you reconcile what that is. But it's very clear cut as opposed to a more protracted drawn up process that, you're relying on data through the social trace or other tools that are are less reliable in that capacity. So then then you go on to have the strong background check. And as Sebastian spoke to earlier, you've got confirmed identifiers upon which you can then build and search. And so the results that come back are much, much more accurate, and the level of confidence, I think, is entirely different. So that's that's one thing. That's very clear on the accuracy portion. Now getting into the convenience portion and I think also the flow. You know, Sebastian talked about integration. If we look now at the current tools on the market, again, constrained limited, when it comes to SS Social Security verification, you could look at CBSV, maybe SSNBS. These are tools currently out there that have been out there offered directly through the government, but they're they're limited in the sense that you've got a separate sign on registration process. They're manual. It's a separate, consent, and it's it's ink based. I think there is some, you know, there was some recent action to make them digital digitize them, but still, they're divorced from the screening process itself. It's a separate cost. It's it's such a it's so cumbersome that very, very few employers even care to sign up for or or or wanna consider it. So it's not convenient in that in that sense. So really exciting to see this available to employers and, really excited for employers to understand it. So I think the video that you shared earlier is gonna be really helpful that way. And I think also just familiarity through this forum and many others will get employers to start to research and understand what this could do, to transform the screening programs within their organizations. Yeah. And maybe just just one thing to add to that kind of from a panel perspective. And, Vu, I'm really glad you pointed it out, because I've never thought of it exactly that way. But as in the screening space, it's really hard to say verification. Right? Because as you said, it's kind of all developed data. It's all coming from different sources. And that's the value of a background check is that you get that information factory putting everything together. That's why it's so important to work with a great partner like Shield on your on your screening journey. We also love the fact that you can verify information about a person upfront before all of that kicks off. And one of the other advantages that we see there is beyond just the accuracy of the data entry is that when identity verification happens upfront, you really get a chance to to screen and verify your candidates before they go through the full background screening process. And in some cases, that can be a 2 step workflow where identity verification comes first. Once the identity verification is successful, then screening kicks off. And having that that workflow in your screening process can also lead to, you know, efficiency gains and and and better performance in the screening workflow. So minor little thing to add. Cool. Very good. Okay. Well, thank you. And so, Sebastian, you told us that story, the health care story, the hospital, where just somebody walked in and caused mayhem. So are there the hospital, where just somebody walked in and caused mayhem. So are there specific industries or roles where virtual biometric identification is especially, recommended or effective? Yeah. That's a it's a great question. My short answer is, I think any workplace has enough sensitive information that you should be verifying the identity of who you're screening and who you're hiring. That's why we like to say, you know, VID is the default option that we suggest for everyone because identity verification is a relatively low cost and high accuracy way to know who you're hiring. The benefit of it is is heightened definitely in cases where, you've got a particularly litigious industry or you've got people who are heavily at risk. So one thing we've seen is, for example, nursing facilities, health care facilities, elder care, where you've got, a population of employees interacting with a very vulnerable population, the elderly or people in the hospital. And that's oftentimes where you're facing the biggest risk of hiring someone who's unverified. If you're relying on, you know, licensure verification, but you're not verifying the identity of the person showing up or the person actually doing the job, you're leaving a really big door open for litigation and for lawsuits. And that's why we've seen health care be really strong in adopting and even in some cases, demanding ID verification from their screening providers. Another industry that we like to point out is energy. Energy is very interesting because we've got, in many cases, contractor networks or contractors in construction where they're showing up to different facilities or different workplaces, and they need to verify themselves at the source. In those examples, having the identity verification plus the wallet can be especially beneficial because you don't just want to verify who you're screening, you also want to verify that it's a it's the same person showing up that you expected to show up. And that's an additional benefit to the form of identity verification that we have with bid, which is why we always call it an identity wallet as opposed to just an identity verification product. So yeah. But, really, every industry benefits from better applicant experience, faster turnaround times, and higher completion rates. So use Vid. That's great. I will share Sebastian's number that, you know, earlier this year, I came across an article that I shared with our internal infosec team because it was so striking to me. It was, a well known, a national or rather global security awareness provider, and they themselves experienced, a fake IT hire who is actually from North Korea. I think it differs from the story that you alluded to earlier, wasn't a government contractor, but they felt so exposed that they were they were completely transparent about it. They're like, this gets to the core of what we provide. We provide infosec training for companies, and we ourselves became a target. So the irony of ironies, luckily for them, they did not experience a compromise. They had cordoned off access, so that bringing this person in after, you know, screening, onboarding, and they they disclose that. And I'll share some of the statement because they put this in a blog, They published it. They provided updates. They said our HR team conducted 4 video conference based interviews on separate occasions confirming the individual matched the photo provided on their application. Additionally, a background check-in all of their standard pre hiring screening was performed. It came back clear due to the stolen identity being used. This was a real person using a valid stolen US based identity. The picture was AI enhanced. Luckily, we sent them when they sent it to their workstation, the moment they received it, it immediately started loading the malware. That's what triggered them. So quickly they worked with the FBI. They determined it was, a North Korean based operative and then and the FBI had indicated and explained there's an actual, program like a and it it's a proliferation of these programs where they have farmed workers from IT from North Korea and China and all for, you know, infiltrating US based companies. And so when you talked about who's targeted, if you have intel, if you have, competitive information, if you are part of, let's see, you know, universities, if you are part of any competitive landscape, you have intelligence. And especially if you are dealing with these, you know, government sanctioned programs, if you look for infiltration, anybody can be a target. But it just really, I think, thank you to their thanks for their candor and being so open about that. And luckily they didn't suffer again in breach or compromise, but look how easy it is to pull victim to that. And I and I think about how they had access to, an option like this and to technology like this, I think it would have been discovered on the front end, but then now they're better able to bolster. So, you know, we and in our viewership, and I think a lot of employers now have access to this. So there there really is, you know, it's not like it's, it's it's specific to anybody and it's, you know, for a class of employers. It's it's available, and that's really, really powerful. Yeah. Absolutely. K. Thank you. Love it. So how did you wanna ask add something else, Sebastian? I I Vu, I think you you you said it best. I mean, the maybe the only other thing I could say is I know it might sound like it's from a spy movie or something like that, but we've spoken with so many different employers in different industries that have had identity scares or verification scares. Oftentimes they didn't even realize it until someone flagged them about the issue, and they exposed themselves pretty significantly. There's no harm in doing ID verification upfront. Really, there are only benefits. So I'll just leave it there. But Fantastic. Alright. Let's do one last question with our panel. How accurate and reliable is virtual biometric identification, and what measures are in place to minimize errors? Mhmm. Yeah. That's a that's a great question. And this is something that if you're using a verification provider, you always wanna check and and make sure, that they've thought about, especially when it comes to screening or use for for hiring purposes. We've put a lot of work into both components of our verification experience. So first of all, liveness detection, facial recognition, all of these sorts of algorithms are always inherently somewhat subject to bias. Doesn't mean that they are biased, but it means that it's possible to introduce bias into the training data. You can train on, for example, more males than females, or you can train on, people of a certain race or skin color more than others, and that can bias the accuracy of the identity verification sources. We make sure that we use datasets that are NIST compliant and that are as bias free as possible in that validation process. And then we combine that with very advanced machine learning algorithms that index cards and identity documents in all forms so that we can do things like check for anomalies in the barcode data on the card or check for missing security features. Now we see about a 1% to 0.5% failure rate. The reason that I put that in quotation marks is most of these failures, I'd say, you know, 95% of the failures are cases where someone has, torn identity document or they you know, we've seen cases where ID cards got melted in a bonfire. We've seen cases where someone grew a very large beard that, you know, while they were clean shaven on their identity document. And one thing that we pride ourselves on at Cerebrum is we have a very advanced verification team, and we work together with Shield on this as well to make sure that we always have backups. So if we can't immediately verify the identity, it's not the end of the verification flow. There's always a next step to verify that candidate, and that's an important backup to have. You don't want to reject candidates just because they were, you know, a little bit, too lazy about putting their ID near the bonfire one day. And that's why we always have backup verification workflows. The nice thing is 99% of people get through instantly right away, and we can give a positive result. And for those ones that don't instantly get verified, we always have very strong quality control measures and, backups to ensure that we're we're still preserving a fair hiring process. Vu, I'm not sure if you have something to add on on that front, but No. I will say, Sebastian, that's that's critical to hear. Me coming from a compliance perspective, absolutely important that we are prepared or rather that we work with a partner prepared, to work with this reconciliation process and to address those. Even though we may say 1%, that 1% may represent even if it's one person, this is their screening experience to try to get a job or to try to enter an organization as a volunteer. And the degree to which we could commit fully to preventing any issues, you know, that's that's what's important. So it's it's fantastic, and inspires confidence to know that, you know, you have that plan in in place and it's bolstered. And I will say that, you know, for for me, it was also confidence building to hear that the IRS itself has partnered with a private provider of similar technology, right, especially making direct file going direct to consumers allowing them to do that because they have confidence in the fact that it's a fraud prevention tool. It's technology that will, prevent you know, assist with data protection. So I think we're gonna see more and more adoption. At least that's the initial feeling I get. And I think while it may be new to employers, I'm I'm really curious to see what this adoption looks like. I'm really, really curious to see the rate at which it's going to proliferate in terms of utilization and the benefits that we're gonna see on both sides, on the employment side, on employers, but also to your point earlier, as applicants. Like, how easily it'll be, you know, knowing that you're you're signing strong with a strong, trustworthy provider and going through that process. And I think we're gonna see it more and more even beyond the background screening space. You know, if you if you travel, you know, that you see it with with your passports, you know that, you know, there are other facets, in modern life. And so I'm curious to see how this is gonna increase and how the adoption is gonna increase as well. Yeah. Great great answer. And maybe the the last thing to to caveat with is identity verification is everywhere. I think 5 years ago, this was a very different conversation. Vu, as you mentioned, candidates, applicants are increasingly very comfortable with it. In fact, the outright rejection rate that we see because we're doing identity verification is less than 0.01%. It's vanishingly small. So alright. Jennifer, pass back to you. That's an amazing statistic, Sebastian. Alright. Well, thanks to both of you for, answering those questions for us. And now it is time to answer our viewers' questions. If you have anything you wanna ask our panelists, please put your questions in the q and a. Now in the meantime, we're also gonna be launching a short survey for you to complete before the end of the webinar and like to thank you in advance. So let's get right to it. If an applicant doesn't provide their Social Security number, can they still get verified? How do you deal with that? Identity verified so it's a good question. Yes. So identity verification can be done without an SSN. Identity verification is done according to government source data. Government source data is very broad. What we're relying on here are documents like state ID cards, driver's licenses, passports, passport cards, and internationally other forms of government issued identity documentation that we support. From a screening perspective, it really depends on the package that you're running and the level of verification that you need, And that's where I'd pass it off to Boo from a from a sort of screening perspective. Yeah. So I think if that person doesn't have a social for whatever reason, there there could be reasons like new to the US, hasn't been assigned yet, then I think that we would go to the traditional model and work around that. But it certainly wouldn't impede the, verification and screening process. Yep. So and, of course, one last thing to mention in bid, of course, we we support opt outs if you don't have a Social Security number. So that's fully supported from a workflow perspective. Very good. Alright. How about this one? What has the candidate experience been like? You did touch on this, Sebastian, but I feel like it needs repetition because it is so interesting. Do candidates seem to prefer bid as opposed to traditional applicant portal invitations? It's a awesome question. So short answer is yes. Overall, that's that's what we see. I think there's two reasons for it. The first one is when an applicant gets a bid invite, they get the choice of whether they want to go through it on their mobile device, and that all happens through a mobile app that they install, or they get the choice to go through it in their web browser. That's kinda up to the user, but it gives the user a lot of choice. And we actually see now in the US, there's about 20% more households that only have mobile devices than have computers. So being mobile first and mobile friendly is a cornerstone of our strategy and we think it really helps also with younger applicants, people who, you know, may not have computers or desktops to fill out a big form on. And that's where we see really increased user satisfaction rates due to bid. And we don't see any decrease in user satisfaction rates in people who prefer to use the desktop top experience because it's basically the same. The only benefit is they're not typing in all that information and they're just uploading their identity document. The other benefit that we see is we've put a lot of work into, as I hope you saw in the demo, the UI and the user experience, Users tend to trust and really respond well to that high quality UI and that high quality user experience. That gives them more trust in the employer and in the hiring process or in volunteering process or whatever they're they're applying for. So we see, you know, generally great great acceptance and adoption. Yeah. Okay. Let's move on. So we're talking about people handing over a lot of their data, their PII. So does Cerebrum or Shield Screening own that data? I mean, what safeguards are in place to protect PII and ensure there's not a breach? Because that's a little scary these days. Absolutely. And, Vu, I I wanna hear the the screening answer to this because I know Shield is totally on top of their game. From from the identity verification and and sort of bid perspective, absolutely. We're SOC 2 accredited, we put a lot of work into our data security infrastructure. All of the PII or information that we store is encrypted, actually doubly so if it's a sensitive piece of information like a Social Security number. And we treat all of the information extremely carefully throughout the applicant and and candidate experience. Everything is held in a protected vault, and it's only released to Shield because we don't sell or give away any of that information. And we also ensure that we have compliance with biometric, privacy acts in the US from the ID verification perspective. All of the PII that we collect is ultimately used in the screening process. So then Shield takes over, and Vu, I'll pass it to you in terms of how Shield treats, treats screening data. Yeah. So SHIELD is a consumer reporting agency, and we're heavily regulated both on the federal front under the Fair Credit Reporting Act, and and also any applicable state laws and then state consumer reporting laws and data privacy laws. And it's critical to note that we're also accredited. We are accredited through the Professional Background Screening Association. So we independently, comply with and demonstrate adherence to standards around data protection, data privacy, information security, and so forth. So we have many, many obligations and separate and apart from that, our technology and platform as such that's also, you know, SOC 2 compliant. And this means that the information that we work with, that is the cornerstone of our business, is private information that we have to protect each and every day. And it's critical to us. So the tandem out to what we do, we take it very seriously, because it builds these background screening reports. So not only are we regulated, we are motivated by the fact that it's our business. And so we rely heavily on technology, but also policies and procedures and employee training, to protect information and keep it secure. And of course, we do not sell it or give it to anybody who's unauthorized who doesn't have, a reason to use it or permission to use it. So all of the above. Okay. Let's do another question. Are there reminders or can there be reminders to be sent to applicants to complete the bid process? Yeah. So, basically, in in the bid flow, we have a full configuration on a package product level, In terms of how invites are sent, how the user gets those invites, by default, we can set any timing that you want. So that can be, you know, once every 12 hours for 30 days. It can be once every 5 days for 15 days, what have you. And all of those are configurable on a product level basis. The other benefit to VIT is that we also can, check the delivery status of those emails and those notifications so we know when users are opening them or when they're not. And we see, again, very high completion rates because part of what we've optimized is our email delivery infrastructure. We spent a lot of time working to get very high deliverability in our email infrastructure. And what that means is when a user gets a bid invite, it goes to the top of their inbox, they see it, and they click on it right away. So, really, overall, I think, a very strong, user acceptance curve and very strong customization abilities at the product level, for for how we configure those invites. Great question. And reminders that we all need. Right? Exactly. Exactly. Yes. Let's do one last question. Could you, talk to me a little bit about how the screening platform integration works? Yeah. Absolutely. And, I'll sort of close it up with this. I think this is a great place to leave it, but, we have worked very closely with Shield to build a very deep level integration into their screening platform. Everything that we talked about today from the bid perspective is directly integrated to the Shield platform, and it's something that round trips incredibly effectively. So it doesn't interfere with any of the current back end processes that you're familiar with if you are a Shield client. And if you're not, they're great. All of the all of the back end for Shield remains the same, and the bid invite just goes out and replaces that applicant, invite and applicant experience, collects all the information, and then pushes it back into the Shield screening platform. So I just wanted to highlight, we put a lot of work into that integration, and we can also collect data within the bid process that's necessary for the screening journey, like disclosures or additional information such as education or employment history, if that's a part of a screening product that you're using. So VIT is very, configurable and and very strong from that perspective, manages the entire applicant journey, and really leads to increased candidate satisfaction. So I'll leave it right there. Alright. Cool. Alright. Any any other questions? I don't think so. I think we are to the end. Thank you, guys. I really appreciate. Their answers were fantastic. I hope everybody got a lot out of this webinar. And like I mentioned, that's all the time we have for today. But if we didn't get to your question, a representative is gonna reach out to you. So thank you so much for joining us. An email is going to be sent out tomorrow with that HRCI code and the copy of the recording so you can go back and see all those great slides that Sebastian brought to us. And we hope to see you at future shield webinar events. Everybody have a great day and a great upcoming weekend. Take care. Thank you, everyone. Thank you. Alright, everyone. Bye. Bye.