SECURITY FOR PAPER DOCUMENTS:
"Structured Magnetics"
from Watermark In Print, © TSSI, October 1997

There has been a great deal of research and development over recent years to combat the threat of plastic card fraud. We have seen the evolution of the smart or chip card to offer secure electronic purse capability and enhanced magnetic technologies such as Watermark Magnetics®.

Both are secure machine readable technologies which enable automated interfacing to databases and remove the responsibility for authentication of the genuine nature of the card from an individual. It must be said however that little has been implemented to secure the authenticity of paper based documents. Whilst there has been a move towards plastic cards as a direct replacement, there are still a considerable number of high value, high security paper documents used today; eg gift vouchers, cheque books, passports, pass books, share certificates, deed, bank drafts, import licences and packaging labels.

The increased sophistication and availability of high quality photocopiers and laser printers makes documents easier to duplicate and thus it is more difficult to determine a genuine document from a counterfeit.

The solution is here: new from TSSI are the Scanseal^TM and Deedmark^TM seal technologies.

SCANSEAL^TM
Scanseal is a machine readable self adhesive label which can be applied by hand to any document. During the manufacturing process a slurry of iron oxide is coated at a controlled thickness onto a base film. The magnetic oxide particles are aligned to form a permanent pattern which can be unique to each seal.

DEEDMARK^TM
Deedmark, by contrast, is a machine readable magnetic foil product and is applied using standard hot foiling equipment. As with Scanseal, the magnetic oxide particles are aligned to form a permanent pattern which can be unique to each seal. Any attempt to remove the seal once affixed to a document causes the oxide to fragment and prevents it being transferred.

READING
Both of these seals can be read using the AUTHENTICATOR^TM hand held reader. The AUTHENTICATOR provides a convenient method of locally checking the authenticity of documents protected by the Scanseal and Deedmark structured magnetics technology.

The reader is scanned across the document and actively examines the magnetic properties of the secure feature to determine whether it is genuine. The identity number from the seal is displayed on the integral LCD and can be sent direct to a PC via an optional flexible data lead.

This hand held unit is completely portable, power is supplied by an internal battery or from a mains supply thus allowing use on-site or at remote locations.

Go To:
Scanseal and Deedmark
Authenticator Reader

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