Tags: digital trust

Higher Ed’s Next Infrastructure Challenge Is Hiding in Plain Sight 

Posted by Aneta Ciurkot on Posted in Biometrics, Cloud, Digital ID, Education Tagged , ,

A university is one of the few places where a person’s identity changes meaning throughout the day. A student may be an applicant, resident, learner, lab user, dining customer, event attendee, test taker, employee, graduate, and alum. An employee may be faculty, staff, researcher, contractor, clinician, coach, visitor, or student worker. Each role carries different permissions, services, spaces, and responsibilities. 

Yet on many campuses, much of that complexity still depends on a physical ID card, disconnected systems, and staff manually solving problems when something breaks. The campus ID card is visible. The larger issue is that identity across campus is often fragmented. 

NEC’s higher education approach frames identity across the full student journey: admission, onboarding, assessment, services, campus access, learning, and alumni engagement. That journey shows why identity matters far beyond a card office transaction.  

Learn more about NEC solutions for higher education here >

The Old Campus ID Was Asked To Do Too Much 

For years, the campus card served as a practical all-purpose credential. It opened doors, verified student status, supported dining, enabled library access, handled printing, helped with events, supported payments, and granted access to residence halls and recreation centers. For employees, it helped manage entry to buildings, offices, classrooms, and restricted areas. 

That model worked when campus services were simpler. Today, the expectations are different. Students expect services to be mobile, immediate, and connected. Employees expect access to be ready when their role begins. Administrators need cleaner records. Security teams need better visibility. Faculty need less time spent on manual attendance and identity checks. IT teams need systems that can work together without creating yet another silo. 

Students Experience The Gaps First 

Students usually notice identity problems at the worst possible moments. They arrive for move-in and cannot enter a residence hall. They try to use a meal plan that has not activated. They need library access that has not synced. They attend a required class where attendance is still being captured manually. They enter a lab, clinic, testing environment, or event where someone has to verify them through a separate process. 

To the institution, these may look like isolated service issues. To the student, they feel like one message: the university is not ready for me yet. 

A campus can invest in recruitment, facilities, academic programs, and student success, but if basic access and identity experiences feel disjointed, students notice. The connected campus begins by making those everyday moments work better. 

The Connected Campus Starts With Trusted Digital Identity 

Digital student IDs are gaining momentum because they match how students already live. Students use phones for payments, tickets, travel, communication, and daily services. A university credential in a mobile wallet feels like a natural next step.  

A connected campus uses identity as a shared foundation across the student and employee journey. That foundation helps answer a few simple but important questions:  

  1. Who is this person?  
  1. What is their current relationship to the institution?  
  1. What are they allowed to access?  
  1. What services are they eligible to use?  
  1. What should change when their status changes? 

Those questions appear everywhere: admissions, onboarding, access control, learning systems, attendance, exams, dining, payments, libraries, housing, events, and alumni services. When each system answers them separately, campus life becomes harder to manage. When identity is connected, the experience becomes simpler for everyone. 

  • For students, that can mean fewer lines, fewer repeated identity checks, faster access to services, and a campus experience that feels organized.
  • For employees, it can mean faster onboarding, cleaner role-based access, and fewer delays when responsibilities change.
  • For faculty, it can mean less time spent on manual attendance or verification tasks.
  • For administrators, it can mean fewer exceptions, cleaner records, and better reporting.
  • For IT and security teams, it can mean more consistent visibility across systems that historically operated separately. 

Technology Should Serve The Experience 

The technology behind a connected campus identity may include digital credentials, biometric verification, liveness detection, mobile wallet support, access control integrations, student information system integrations, learning platform integrations, and real-time authorization. The strongest identity strategies make the campus feel more human. They reduce avoidable administrative burden so staff can spend more time supporting people. 

The Campus Digital ID Is Becoming A Campus Platform 

The future of the university will depend on how well physical and digital experiences work together. Classrooms, residence halls, labs, dining, libraries, events, exams, health programs, workforce training, and alumni services all depend on identity in some form. 

That makes campus identity more than an administrative function. It is becoming the front door to the connected university. 

Explore how NEC helps higher education institutions modernize identity across admission, onboarding, campus access, attendance, assessment, services, and alumni engagement. 

How Banks Can Use NEC to Strengthen Identity Across the Customer Lifecycle 

Posted by Aneta Ciurkot on Posted in Digital ID, Enterprise, Finance Tagged

Banks tend to see the value of digital identity most clearly at the points where trust is being tested: account opening, authentication, recovery, payments, and employee access. In each of those areas, stronger identity can help reduce fraud, improve consistency, and give customers and institutions more confidence in the interaction. 

These are the areas where NEC helps financial institutions apply digital identity and biometrics in practical ways. The goal is to give banks a stronger and more consistent way to verify identity, reduce fraud, and support trust across the customer and workforce lifecycle.  

Onboarding and KYC 

The first place banks feel the limits of weaker identity is at onboarding. Account opening has to be fast enough to support digital growth, but strong enough to stand up to fraud, impersonation, and compliance requirements. 

NEC can help banks strengthen digital onboarding and KYC through identity verification that captures and validates an identity credential, then verifies a live selfie with liveness detection and a one-to-one biometric match against the photo on the ID credential. In practical terms, that helps the bank confirm that the document is valid, that the person is real and present, and that they are the rightful holder of the identity being presented.  

Authentication, Account Protection, and Recovery 

Once the account is opened, the identity challenge shifts. Banks need to protect existing accounts against misuse, confirm identity during ongoing access, and restore access when credentials are compromised or an interaction requires stronger proof. 

NEC can help banks carry identity assurance forward after onboarding through ongoing biometric confirmation. That gives the institution a stronger way to confirm that the same trusted person is returning, rather than relying only on passwords, OTPs, or knowledge-based checks. It is especially relevant in account recovery, where the bank needs to re-establish confidence quickly and securely without forcing the customer into a branch visit or a manual process. The platform overview identifies account recovery and step-up verification in financial services as a direct use case.  

Step-Up Identity for Higher-Risk Actions

Not every interaction calls for the same level of assurance. A routine login may require one approach. A large transfer, a new payee, unusual account activity, or a sensitive profile change may require something stronger. 

This is where banks can use NEC to apply biometric verification as a step-up control for higher-risk actions. A customer can be asked to complete a live biometric verification event when the bank needs greater certainty that the person behind the action is the legitimate account holder.

Payments, Wallets, and Channel Continuity 

Banks also need identity to work consistently across apps, payments, wallets, and in-person service environments. A customer may open an account in one channel, authenticate in another, approve a payment somewhere else, and interact with bank staff in a different setting. If identity is handled differently in each place, gaps start to appear. 

NEC can help banks connect those experiences more effectively. The retail banking and payments architecture you shared brings together wallets and apps, POS components, customer identity and access management, bank and payment systems, and an identity resolution platform. That gives banks a stronger way to support payment approval, face-based payment experiences, and more consistent identity assurance across channels.  

Consent-Based Fraud Investigation and Linked-Identity Analysis 

Banks can also use NEC to support fraud investigations through consent-based biometric matching. When a customer provides identity information as part of account opening and verification, that data can later be used, within the bank’s policies and applicable legal framework, to investigate suspected fraud. If a suspicious account is identified, investigators can use the associated image to compare against other enrolled records and datasets to see whether the same person may be linked to multiple accounts using different details. This is not surveillance. It is a defined fraud investigation use case based on customer-provided data and a legitimate banking purpose. The value for fraud teams is the ability to connect related identities and spot patterns that might otherwise remain hidden. 

Where NEC Can Help First 

For most banks, the best place to start is with the use cases where identity has the clearest business impact: onboarding and KYC, account protection and recovery, higher-risk approvals, payments, and workforce access. Those are the moments where stronger identity can improve security, reduce operational strain, and create a more dependable experience for customers and employees alike. 

To see how this applies in practice, explore NEC’s use cases for banking and financial services, or speak with our team about how we’re helping banks address these use cases as part of a broader identity strategy rather than as disconnected projects.

The Biometrics Debate in Banking Has Changed

Posted by Aneta Ciurkot on Posted in Biometrics, Finance Tagged

Banks are operating under a different identity standard than they were even a few years ago. Customers are more familiar with biometrics, more aware of account takeover and impersonation risks, and less likely to believe that passwords and one-time passcodes are enough on their own. They expect stronger protection, especially when the interaction carries financial risk. They also expect identity checks to feel measured, appropriate, and well handled.

That shift matters because many banks are still relying on identity models built for an earlier digital environment. Passwords, passcodes, and fragmented verification steps still have a role, but they are no longer a strong enough foundation for trust on their own. Not when customers are opening accounts remotely, restoring access after suspicious activity, approving significant transactions, or moving across channels where certainty has to hold together.

The Old Identity Model Is Starting To Show Its Limits

The debate around biometrics in banking has changed because the problem has changed. Identity is no longer confined to login. It now stretches across onboarding, ongoing access, account recovery, transaction approval, and exception handling. In those moments, the bank is not simply granting access. It is deciding how confidently it knows who it is dealing with.

That is why biometric identity is becoming more important. Not as a standalone feature, and not as a replacement for every other control, but as part of a stronger model for confirming the person behind the interaction.

Customers Are Bringing A Different Set Of Expectations

Customers are asking for identity processes that match the seriousness of the interaction. A routine access event may call for one level of assurance. A high-value transaction, an account recovery request, or unusual account activity may call for something stronger. The expectation is not complexity for its own sake, but a confidence that the bank is applying the right level of identity assurance at the right moment.

That is one reason older methods no longer feel sufficient on their own. The issue is not that passwords or one-time passcodes have disappeared from banking. It is that they no longer represent a convincing standard by themselves for the moments where trust is genuinely being tested.

What A Stronger Identity Model Looks Like In Practice

A better identity model gives banks a way to carry trust forward. It connects the assurance established at onboarding to later interactions, rather than forcing the institution to rebuild confidence from scratch each time risk rises or something goes wrong. That continuity matters in practice. It can strengthen onboarding, support more reliable account recovery, improve transaction approval, and create a more consistent identity posture across channels.

This is where NEC’s banking identity approach becomes relevant. NEC Digital ID and NEC Identity Cloud are built around the idea that trust in financial services is not a one-time event. It has to be established at the start of the relationship, maintained over time, and applied consistently across the moments that matter most. For banks, that means support for remote identity verification, ongoing biometric authentication, and stronger continuity between onboarding, access, recovery, and higher-risk customer actions.

Stronger Identity Also Has To Stand Up To Scrutiny

Customers want stronger protection, but they also want to know that information is being handled with care. Regulators and internal stakeholders want to know that systems are proportionate, explainable, and aligned with responsible data practices.

To see how this applies in practice, explore NEC’s biometrics use cases for banking and financial services, or speak with our team about how we work with leading financial institutions on digital trust, responsible biometrics, and stronger identity across the customer lifecycle.

Why Biometrics Are Becoming Part of the Bank’s Trust Architecture

Posted by Aneta Ciurkot on Posted in Biometrics, Digital ID, Finance Tagged

For years, identity sat quietly behind the scenes in banking. It appeared at account opening, at login, and occasionally during a recovery process, but it was rarely treated as a strategic layer in its own right. That is changing. In 2026, identity is becoming part of the bank’s trust architecture: not a single control, but a framework for how institutions establish confidence, manage risk, and sustain digital relationships over time. Accenture’s Top Banking Trends 2026 points to an industry being reshaped by agentic AI, digital assets, and new competitive conditions, while Deloitte’s 2026 outlook describes a more demanding environment for governance, resilience, and regulatory oversight.

Identity Has Moved Out Of The Background

The old model treated identity as a sequence of isolated checkpoints. One process handled onboarding, another handled authentication, another dealt with call-center verification, and still another sat inside workforce access or approval flows. That approach is increasingly out of step with how banks operate now. Digital relationships are continuous, channels are interconnected, and assurance has to hold together across far more moments than it once did.

That is why identity now belongs in a larger institutional conversation. It sits close to fraud strategy, operational resilience, AI governance, and customer confidence. J.P. Morgan’s latest annual report letters make that plain. Jamie Dimon writes that misuse of customer data is likely to grow worse with AI and agentic commerce, while Jennifer Piepszak emphasizes that AI must be connected to well-governed data and safeguards that protect clients, firms, and the financial system. 

Why The Operating Model Matters More Than The Feature Set

Once identity is understood as trust infrastructure, the questions become more serious. Banks are asking whether the institution has a coherent way to establish trust at the start of a relationship, maintain it across later interactions, and support trusted reuse of identity when appropriate.

NEC Identity Cloud points to a useful way of understanding the identity challenge in banking. Trust is not created once and left behind. It begins at onboarding, has to be sustained through later interactions, and increasingly needs to support how verified identity is used across a wider set of services and decisions. That is closer to how banks actually experience the issue: not as a single checkpoint, but as an ongoing responsibility.

That matters because the quality of trust is often tested long after the first verification event. A bank may know who a customer is at account opening, but the more important question is whether that assurance can still be relied on during account recovery, transaction approval, or an unusual event. When the answer is yes, identity becomes a steadier part of the operating model. When the answer is no, the institution ends up trying to recreate certainty under pressure.

[Learn more about NEC Identity Cloud >]

Trust Is Now A Governance Question As Well As A Security One

This is what makes the biometric conversation more consequential than it was even a few years ago. The issue is no longer limited to performance measures such as speed, accuracy, or fraud reduction. Those remain important, but the larger question is whether identity systems are being used in ways that are proportionate, understandable, and properly governed.

NEC approaches digital trust through a public commitment to privacy and responsible AI. For financial institutions, that is significant because trust is not defined only by technical strength. It is also shaped by whether systems can be clearly explained, responsibly overseen, and applied in ways that reflect the sensitivity of identity in banking.

In banking, this makes biometrics part of a broader conversation about institutional trust: how it is created, how it holds up over time, and how it is governed as risk and customer expectations continue to evolve.

Explore NEC’s biometrics use cases in banking and financial services, or connect with our team to discuss how leading institutions are approaching digital trust, stronger identity, and secure customer experiences.

Truly Open, Truly Trusted at Identity Week 2022

Posted by Kathleen Kiernan on Posted in Analytics, Biometrics, Cloud, Conference, Customer Experience, Government, Law Enforcement, Security Tagged , , , , , , ,

In the spirit of “asu,” the Japanese word for tomorrow, NEC was proud to be the title sponsor for Identity Week as we look forward to the future of digital identity and biometrics.

Formerly known as Connect ID, Identity Week connects identity professionals from across government, finance, retail, eCommerce, health care, and travel. More than 1,000 attendees from around the world were at the event in October at Walter E. Washington Convention Center in Washington, DC.

Kicking off Identity Week, David Pekoske, Administrator of the Transportation Security Administration (TSA), shared staggering numbers. On Labor Day weekend, 8.76 million travelers were screened by TSA. That’s up 102% from pre-pandemic levels. To effectively screen the growing number of passengers, TSA will deploy more biometric technology so that travelers have safe and seamless experiences.

Administrator Pekoske also gave us insight into the TSA Innovation Task Force’s plan for an upcoming “innovation doctrine” that will help guide future technology projects to integrate new hardware and software. This forward-thinking approach to digital transformation will ensure that travelers have a safe and convenient “curb-to-gate” travel experience in airports.

Mind the Trust Gap
I was honored to present the opening keynote, “Mind the Trust Gap,” spotlighting digital ID within the federal and aviation sectors.

NEC’s vision of being truly open, and truly trusted is one of our strengths as a 123-year-old company. We continuously look to asu (tomorrow) and the possibilities of the future, prioritizing trust, security, and seamless experiences. I challenged the audience to not only build on current technologies but to also widen our aperture and think about the threats of tomorrow. Asu is NEC’s commitment to outside-the-box thinking to develop solutions at the speed of need.

Convergence of Online and Offline ID
“Decentralized ID is our vision for secure, self-sovereign, and standardized digital ID.” NEC Vice President Micah Willbrand gave the summit speech on the convergence of online and offline identities, the evolution toward decentralized digital ID, and how it’s being used in retail, aviation, and other applications. He stressed that the public sector should look toward the private sector as more consumers demand streamlined experiences.

Digital-Enabled Citizen Experiences
Austin Park, Director for NEC National Security Systems (NEC NSS), participated on a panel about digitally enabled citizen experiences. Austin predicts, “Decentralized identity will become much more prevalent in the next five years due to its privacy-by-design nature.”

Beyond Digital Identity
NEC Labs President Chris White led a seminar pointing out the importance of “applying real-time methods of sensing people and the environment to make accurate and efficient authentication systems.” NEC Labs is the U.S.-based center for NEC Corporation’s global network of research laboratories. NEC NSS and NEC Labs work in tandem on innovative biometric solutions.

Harnessing AI to Enhance Customer Experience
NEC Labs also invited attendees to try their luck with our AI-driven golf putt analyzer. Executive Vice President Keith Terreri demonstrated his golf skills and got an insight into his swing, body movements, and positioning. It was a fun, interactive way to showcase the technology and how it can be applied to enhance digital ID, security, and customer experience.

Being with our peers at Identity Week was inspiring and energizing. There were spirited discussions about Next Gen identity verification, which reinforces our mission at NEC NSS to apply scientific curiosity with the flexibility to rapidly prototype custom solutions. We look forward to next year’s event!

Discover more about NEC National Security Systems or contact us directly.

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