Biometric Update

The UK government needs to do more to help the domestic market for digital trust services like electronic signatures, according to feedback gathered by the Department for Science, Innovation & Technology (DSIT). The Office for Digital Identities & Attributes (OfDIA) and DSIT published the 37 responses, 18 of which came from trust service providers (TSPs), along with the government’s take.

Resilience and realism were central to the discussions among digital identity and DPI experts from around the world at ID4Africa 2026 in Abidjan, Cote d’Ivoire. The event was the largest in ID4Africa’s 12-year history, despite global and regional disruptions from war to Ebola. One of the main themes of the event is a conceptual transition; from thinking about service delivery with digital identity from digital public infrastructure (DPI) to digital public ecosystems.

As nations around the world build up their digital public infrastructure as a mechanism of social inclusion and economic development, cyber vulnerabilities emerge that can impede public trust. Yet techniques and technologies to find and mitigate those vulnerabilities are even newer than the concept of DPI, in many cases, leaving governments underprepared to protect digital IDs and other critical systems.

UK regulator Ofcom is not one hundred percent confident that it can enforce the government’s plan to impose an age restriction on large social media platforms. The Times reports that Ofcom has written to the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology (DSIT), calling for the government to be “as clear and specific as possible, including about the services these restrictions will and will not apply to” – and making the case for more support.

The UK government has unveiled its Digital Standards Strategy 2026–2030, a plan which puts international standards into the spotlight, driving the country’s next phase of digital transformation. The strategy aims to support economic growth, strengthen the UK’s influence in global standards bodies, and could accelerate the adoption of technologies such as digital identity, biometrics, AI and quantum computing. The government believes that standards help to structure economic infrastructure.

Biometric age assurance debate reaches Arab countries with 15-and-up rule Categories Age Assurance  |  Biometrics News The UAE has become the first Arab country to introduce an age restriction for social media, opening up another potential market for biometric age assurance providers.

An AI agent is not a person. But is it an identity? In Estonia, the answer is now yes. The tech-forward nation has announced its intention to assign digital identities in the form of “AI ID codes” to AI agents, for identification purposes and to limit the scope of their activity.

Lawmakers in Maldives are examining two draft legislations in a major step toward building a formal legal architecture for the country’s digital transformation future. This week, parliament recorded the first reading of a Digital Identity Bill, and then passed a Cyber Security draft text for committee-level scrutiny.

Partnership aims to address rise of AI-assisted deepfake fraud Categories Biometrics News  |  Liveness Detection Finnish cybersecurity firm F-Secure has integrated technology from Italy-based deepfake detection specialists IdentifAI. A release says IdentifAI’s Deepfake Protection product adds real-time detection of AI-generated images, video, and voice to F-Secure’s Scam Protection Suite, helping protect against the rising threat of synthetic media and AI-assisted scams.

A series of digital identity announcements is an indication of how quickly the market is moving toward a wallet‑first model of onboarding. The competition is set, in the race to accept trusted digital credentials at scale. New partnerships unveiled by Incode, authID and OneSpan suggest vendors are jostling for position as infrastructure providers, demonstrating identity orchestration capabilities across borders and standards.