Glossary

A framework used to assess an organisation’s business practices and performance on various sustainability and ethical issues.

A document in the form of a book or a card with an electronic microchip and antenna. The chip contains the holder’s scrambled personal data: eg. digital photo, name, data from the machine-readable zone, fingerprints, iris. The data is read by special devices and compared to personalisation data on the document, the holder’s physical data and the database.

Ink that rubs off when an attempt is made to erase information in the area that has been printed. The ink will also affect the paper in the same manner as solvent/chemical reactive inks, providing two security features in one. Often used to print the background of a cheque.

A body created within the European Union to support EU member states in the fight against terrorism, cybercrime and other serious and organised forms of crime, like currency counterfeiting.

Also called electronic or online visa. It is simply a visa that can be applied for online but is no different to other types of travel visas.

Part of the qualification process to receive a tender document. The buyer (eg. a government organisation) is requesting a provider to express an interest in providing goods and services for a project.

A black rectangle printed on the edge of labels and other printed materials, which is read by a machine to locate where one label starts and the next ends. 

An EU-accredited system for exchanging classified information on false as well as genuine travel and identity documents between document experts. Intranet FADO (iFADO) is the access-restricted, second level of FADO, for governmental and law enforcement use.

An open industry association for developing and promoting authentication standards that help reduce over-reliance on passwords. The alliance supports authentication technologies, including biometrics such as fingerprint and iris scanners, and voice and facial recognition.

Refers to the combination of scanning and software programmes with unique physical characteristics intrinsic to a product or secure document. Fingerprinting is based on the fundamental premise that at the microscopic or molecular level the characteristics of every printed document or package are unique to that item.

A rotary relief printing method whereby a mirrored 3D relief of the required image is created in a rubber or polymer material. A measured amount of ink is deposited upon the surface of the printing plate, which then rotates, making contact with the substrate and transferring the ink.

An optically variable element visually perceived as an image hovering or floating in space above or below a document’s surface.

A type of luminescence, describing the ability of some molecules or materials to absorb ultraviolet (UV) energy and immediately re-emit this energy within the visible spectrum, as a glowing light. The emitted light disappears as soon as the excitation light is extinguished. There is no persistence of emitted light as in the case of phosphorescence.

UV-activated fibres that are randomly distributed across the surface and through the volume of security paper during the papermaking process.

Small coloured or colourless particles of a different size randomly embedded in paper pulp during the manufacturing process. The particles glow when exposed to UV light.

UV-activated ink that ceases to glow immediately after the illuminating light source has been turned off.

Small, coloured discs with fluorescent properties usually mixed into the paper pulp during the papermaking process.

A material comprising a polyester carrier with one or more coatings, a release layer and an adhesive layer. The foil is transferred – generally by heat – onto paper, and the carrier is stripped away, leaving the coating bonded to the substrate by the adhesive. This coating can be plain or imaged, monochrome or coloured, colour-shifting, iridescent, metallised, holographic, etc. Also known as hot stamping or transfer foil. Foils are generally applied to banknotes as a continuous stripe (typically measuring 6-10mm wide) or a patch (typically square, circular or elliptical).

Security feature reserved for special departments or officials. Special tools or laboratories are required to reveal their presence and characteristics. The presence and nature of these features are generally kept a closely guarded secret and they are typically used after an enforcement raid to provide definitive proof of the authenticity of a product or document. Such proof can be used, if necessary, as evidence in a court of law.

A general or multipurpose identification system primarily created to manage identity information for the general population and provide credentials that serve as proof of identity for applications such as national ID, civil registry and population registration.

Also known as process colour printing – a conventional printing method based on four colours: the so-called CMYK colours of cyan, magenta, yellow and black. Together, these colours can reproduce on paper almost 70% of the colours visible to the human eye.

A papermaking machine consisting of a moving endless belt of wire or plastic screen that receives a mixture of pulp and water and allows excess water to drain off, forming a continuous. Fourdrinier was first machine to produce a continuous web (roll). It is more suited than cylinder mould for producing lightweight paper for documents such as tax stamps. See also Dandy roll.

Capable of being broken. Refers to security labels or tax stamps which break up when removed or tampered with.

A type of composite compact lens developed by the French physicist Augustin-Jean Fresnel for use in lighthouses. The design allows the construction of lenses of large aperture and short focal length without the mass and volume of material that would be required by a conventional optical lens. Instead of the curved surface of a conventional lens the Fresnel lens consists of a series of concentric grooves that act as individual refracting surfaces, bending parallel light rays to a common focal length.

Solvent- or water-based ink printed onto a security document. When solvent or ink eradicators are applied to the document the fugitive ink spreads out creating a smudge, which denotes the attempt to tamper with the print.

A sectoral or single-purpose identification system primarily created to manage identity information and provide credentials that serve as proof of identity for applications such as voter registration, tax ID, social security numbers and driving licences.

The recipe used to manufacture paper that comprises various pulps, dyes, additives and other chemicals blended together in the stock preparation area of the paper mill and fed to the wet end of paper machines to make paper or paperboard.

A biometric subject’s manner of walking.

A subset of artificial intelligence that focuses on creating new content, such as text, images, audio, or video, by learning patterns from existing data. Common examples include language models like GPT (which powers ChatGPT) or image generation models like DALL-E. Unlike agentic AI, generative AI operates under user prompts and can’t perform tasks on its own initiative.

A secondary portrait image of a document holder created by laser perforation and visible in transmitted light.

A type of intaglio printing process, which involves engraving an image onto a cylinder. Like offset printing and flexography, gravure uses a rotary printing press.

A printing technique that uses varying shades of gray to produce an image. Unlike full colour images created by combining different colours of ink, grayscale images are produced solely from black ink.

A printed security feature composed of geometric, complex patterns of interlaced or interwoven curved fine lines that are difficult to reproduce using digital print or photocopiers.

The number of non-corresponding digits in a string of binary digits, used to measure dissimilarity. Hamming distances are used in many Daugman iris recognition algorithms.

A method of lamination whereby heat is used to transfer print from one substrate to another. Most US cigarette tax stamps are applied by this method.

The refractive index of a material is a dimensionless number that describes how fast light travels through the material. In situations where a transparent hologram is required, for instance as a laminate to cover the variable data of a passport or other ID document, instead of coating the holographic image with a metallic film, a transparent coating is made using a material with a high refractive index. The HRI materials used in this process are typically oxides (eg. titanium dioxide) or sulphides (eg. zinc sulphide). In this way, the light diffracted by the hologram can be seen, as can the variable data underneath.

Flexible woven fabric used to attach a polycarbonate biodata card to a booklet ID document, fused into the polycarbonate body of the biodata card.

The term ‘hologram’ is derived from two Greek words: ‘holos’ meaning whole or complete and ‘graphos’ meaning an image. The term therefore describes a recorded image which is complete, in that it shows, through the diffraction of light, the whole volumetric space of the image – with depth, colour and movement. This is in contrast to a conventional picture, painting or photograph which displays an object from a single viewpoint only.

A method of transferring a foil from a polyester carrier to paper or other substrate through the combination of heat and pressure. Hot foil stamping can be used to support holographic anda other optically variable images which can be transferred, using heat and pressure, onto another substrate such as paper or plastic. The layers containing the image are extremely thin, typically 5-6 microns. Therefore, they need to be supported on a thicker material such as 19-micron thick polyester. The action of stamping the foil with a heated die causes a ‘release’ layer between the image and polyester support to melt, while simultaneously softening an adhesive ‘size’ coating. These combined effects allow the image to leave the polyester support and adhere to its new location.

An adhesive that is solid at room temperature and becomes liquid when heated. Used to bond two surfaces when cool.

A substrate that is a mixture of natural fibres (cotton) and plastic material, without one predominating the other.

A set of attributes that uniquely describe a person.

A physical identity credential.

An interconnected set of identification systems – including databases, credentials, laws, processes and protocols.

A government agency or private corporation that issues and manages identities, credentials, and authentication processes.

The production, distribution or sale of counterfeit, adulterated or diverted goods via illegal and unregulated channels. Also includes the evasion of taxes on legally produced goods.

A biochemical test measuring the presence or concentration of a molecule in an extracted substrate using an antibody or antigen.

The light that emanates from a defined light source, such as the sun or a lightbulb, and illuminates an object.

Signs, indications, tokens or distinguishing marks.

The part of the electromagnetic spectrum between 700nm and 1.0mm wavelength. IR light lies immediately beyond red visible light and is therefore invisible to the naked eye. IR light is used in detectors and special equipment to detect security features of banknotes and other documents.