Updating Identity Documents for Robust Security and Standards Compliance

While the validity period of identity documents is often somewhere between five to ten years, this translates to a much longer lifespan of the document’s security features. Designs and security features are typically selected many months or even years in advance of the very first printing and issuance.

At the same time, documents will circulate in public until well after a new series has been launched; namely, until the very last document from the previous series has been renewed by its holder. In practice, this can sum up to lifetimes of 20+ years for a ten-year document.

A related concern is how current the technologies deployed to protect documents against counterfeiting are. At the end of the lifetime of a ten-year document, the inherent anti-counterfeit technologies can be more than 25 years old, and a large proportion of them may have been convincingly counterfeited during the latter part of that time.

This extended lifecycle of security architectures is a concern for issuing authorities. Features considered advanced during the initial design phase may face a very different technological and criminal environment towards the end of a document’s circulation period.

Document review and update projects should therefore begin long before a current security concept faces serious counterfeiting issues or otherwise reaches its practical limits. Waiting for visible evidence of compromise can result in significant financial damage and security concerns for governments and citizens alike.

Regular Document Reviews and Update Assessments

Identity documents do not need to have been compromised before their security architecture warrants reassessment. Governments and issuing authorities should regularly conduct risk reviews to understand the current threat landscape, and take a variety of relevant indicators into account, such as:

• increasingly credible imitations of prominent security features

• changes in counterfeiting patterns or targeted security features

• fit of security features to desired protection levels and verification methods

• developments in international standards or mandatory specifications

• changes in recognized industry practice

Periodic assessments can help authorities identify upgrade needs early and find the necessary time to define their individual requirements, evaluate new technologies, conduct testing and coordinate production and supply. Proactive planning will enable greater freedom to select suitable technologies and solutions on the basis of long-term security value, and help avoid situations where issuers have to react under time pressure.

For machine-readable travel documents, ICAO Doc 9303 provides the central international framework. Its various parts address areas such as document security, common specifications, passport and card formats, machine-readable data, public key infrastructure for digital verification methods, and minimum security standards for physical security features such as DOVIDs.

Following the applicable ICAO specifications is an essential prerequisite for effortless interoperability across borders. It ensures that a document will be readable and verifiable at inspection points throughout the world.

And yet, international specifications provide the necessary baseline only. For a robust security architecture that goes well beyond minimum standards, governments and issuing authorities are well advised to look beyond.

The security value of an identity credential does not only depend on the number of protective features it contains and whether or not these features and the document layout follow ICAO specifications. The security features must be effectively selected, combined, and integrated with the design, substrate, personalization, and document production.

For example, if procurement requirements allow bidders to meet only a specific minimum technical threshold, price pressure may favor solutions that formally comply, but provide only limited differentiation or long-term resilience.

Effective document updates should therefore aim at raising the minimum expected security level. The procurement process should encourage bidders to propose advanced, mutually reinforcing technologies rather than simply assemble the least costly combination that satisfies a checklist.

Complementing Document Standards with Expert Guidance

In drafting the specifications for document upgrades, governments and document issuers are encouraged to consider recommendations by independent experts and organizations. The comprehensive “2026 Best Practice Guidelines and Minimum Security Standards for Identity Documents” document, issued jointly by INTERGRAF, the Document Security Alliance (DSA) and the Secure Identity Alliance (SIA), is one example for such recommendations.

Best practices and expert guidance can help authorities assess questions that extend well beyond minimum conformity when making decisions on how to upgrade an identity document:

• Are the security features mutually reinforcing and compatible?
• Are first-line features easy to locate, understand and verify?
• Are the portrait and personalized data comprehensively protected?
• Can the security features be read reliably by machines?
• Do document design and security features remain practical under realistic inspection conditions?
• Are document design and security features able to mitigate foreseeable threats over an extended period of time?

Conducting a document update or issuing an entirely new document is a major investment and an infrequent opportunity. The decisions taken during the initial design and specification phases will determine the credential’s resilience for many years after its first issuance.

The objective should therefore be not simply to refresh the appearance of the previous document, nor should it be limited to satisfying the minimum requirements valid at the time of procurement.

A successful document update should take account of the full document lifecycle, the latest capabilities of counterfeiters, and the evolving technologies and solutions that are likely to shape document security in the years ahead.

International specifications, ambitious minimum requirements and recognized best practice guidance provide a strong foundation for a robustly secure document update. Combined with an individual threat assessment, expert advice, and the know-how of experienced partners such as OVD Kinegram, issuing authorities can safely create interoperable, intuitive and highly secure documents.

The right time to start is not when the existing document is already facing problems. It is while there is still ample time to design the next generation properly.