Search results matching tag 'security printing'

Looking for that lost waffle?

StevenSimske — Sat, 31 Oct 2009 03:20:00 GMT

Many of you are aware that 2D barcodes--which look like waffles--are becoming ubiquitous for location-based services, mobile commerce, and increasingly point-of-sale and track and trace applications.

Did you know that there are many more you cannot see? They're covert 2D barcodes. And the master at providing reading equipment to find these hidden waffles is John Hattersley of InData Systems. I've had the pleasure to work with him on "ink-specific handheld readers". The concept is simple. The barcode reader has LEDs (or other light source) built-in that are tuned to the excitation bandgap of the covert ink (usually in the UV band), and bandpass filters tuned to the (higher-wavelength) reflected light.

See InData System's brochure (attached below) on John's presentation at the upcoming ITI Security Printing Conference (see http://www.communities.hp.com/online/blogs/securityprinting/archive/2009/09/12/imi-s-security-printing-conference-nov-16-18-2009-baltimore-usa.aspx) for more details. And enjoy the waffles.

Cheers,

Steve

Variable Data Printing and Improved Pharma Product Protection and Brand/Customer Interaction

StevenSimske — Wed, 14 Oct 2009 04:18:00 GMT

My previous post was a link to the excellent In-Pharma Technologist blog edited by Nick Taylor. Nick solicited a posting from me back in April, but I could not find it on In-Pharma, so given a 1/2 year grace period, I think its time to post here:

Variable Data Printing and Improved Pharma Product Protection and Brand/Customer Interaction

Pharma brands are concerned with the integrity of their product. All successful pharmaceuticals have one thing in common: they improve the quality of life of the customer. Counterfeit pharmaceuticals, on the other hand, are harmful to both the customer and to the manufacturer; that is, they can simultaneously destroy lives and jobs. Brands pay many times over for counterfeits: loss of original sale, loss of future sales due to erosion of consumer confidence, loss of market capitalization due to perceived non-efficacy of the product, and potential legal recourse as a consequence of the consumer receiving phony goods.

All pharmaceuticals share another important thing in common. Information about the product must accompany the product. From packaging to labels to inserts, this information is conveyed by printing. Therein lies the solution to the problem.

Printing is pre-adapted for its use in security. Useful already in product identification, the variability printing provides is a natural fit for security. Variable Data Printing, or VDP, is the technology enabling the varying of every aspect of a print job. This is advantageous for individually tagging an item—a process called mass serialization. Mass serialization is a means of ensuring that each label, package or document contains a different identifier that can be read (which means interrogated and the data encoded successfully interpreted).

However, VDP can be used for far more than mass serialization in protecting a product. With security VDP, or SVDP, the different printed regions—be they text, image or graphics—contain not just variable data, but usually uniquely variable data. Also, this variable data can be (but isn’t always) read by some type of inspection, authentication or forensic device. That is, every variably printed region contains not just data, but security information. Thus, every region is novel, or unique identified, and so capable of being interrogated for its information.

To prevent counterfeiting, brand owners need to provide a moving target for the would-be counterfeiters, staying one step ahead of them in the deployment of security features. However, this is a tedious game, and often expensive, as brand owners continually research and purchase new deterrents. SVDP offers, however, an innate moving target—the ability to change the very nature of the variability on the fly. With SVDP, a moving target of deterrents is obtained without having to change the technology.

Linking or hybridization is how the set of variable features relate to one other. Examples of deterrent relationships include replication, hashing, sequence fragmentation [sharing the mass serialization data between two or more variable regions], and other techniques for making the multiple variable regions “cooperate” with each other. One particularly powerful method is to use one deterrent—usually one already used for track and trace or point-of-sale—as the registry “look up” sequence from which the signed-in user may then obtain information on one or more other variable regions. The method of hybridization can be changed from one print job to the next, meaning that the would-be counterfeiter must replicate all of the variable features which are monitored to be able to pass the phony product as authentic. Which “extra” features are actually monitored can be varied from day to day, making compliance both simple and thorough.

Monitoring information-containing printed images is getting easier every day. The near-ubiquity of camera-enabled mobile devices, therefore, strengthens the value of SVDP. Already, bar code interpreting software is native or readily downloaded to most internet-enabled mobile devices. Piggybacking image authentication services for other printed patterns is straightforward to implement.

Different variably printed regions can be used for track and trace, authentication, forensics, recall and other contingencies, or just to decoy the would-be counterfeiters. The way in which deterrents relate can be tied to pragmatic product details. For example, if the shelf life of a product is six months, it makes sense to change the relationship between deterrents every six months, so that expired products also exhibit “expired” security strategies. In the meantime, if certain deterrents are being successfully attacked, then adding new variability to the printed material is another way of gathering information on who the counterfeiters might be—insidious insiders, for example, may quickly incorporate these new variable regions, even if they are not tracked by your authenticators, and so tip their hand to you.

Incorporation of SVDP into the printing is straightforward, as there are only three rules: (1) meet compliance standards first, (2) vary several additional regions, and (3) change the relationship between the variable regions (hybridization plan) frequently.

Counterfeiters know all about SVDP, and they’re reading this and other related articles. Recall that there is no security through obscurity—counterfeiters reading this will know what they’re up against, but will not easily be able to spoof SVDP, except one item at a time (which makes the cost of counterfeiting higher). Thus, SVDP offers a means of staying one step ahead of the counterfeiters without running yourself ragged.

Cheers,

Steve

Conference Time Part IV: New Findings in Security Printing and Imaging

StevenSimske — Thu, 24 Sep 2009 03:07:00 GMT

If there is no rest for the wicked, then I have been very evil these past two weeks indeed. But, I hope some of the findings are wickedly cool. This post is for the paper on new findings in security printing and imaging, and my co-authors are that talented trio of Guy Adams, Jason Aronoff and Margaret Sturgill. Though a bit of a grab bag, this paper focuses on three primary tracks of research:

(1) Does error correcting code always make sense for barcodes? We found out that for 2D and 3D barcodes, the answer is, not usually.

(2) Can classification of authentic and counterfeit samples actually improve with increased compression? Interestingly, the answer appears to be yes in many cases, especially when color is involved (I've reviewed a paper recently that showed the same controversial results--increased accuracy with compression--for forest classification).

(3) Does color help forensic image analysis? Again, the answer is yes.

Give it a read, it's short!

http://www.hpl.hp.com/techreports/2009/HPL-2009-328.html

Cheers,

Steve

Conference Time Part III: Barcode Readability

StevenSimske — Thu, 24 Sep 2009 02:54:00 GMT

Printing and scanning change what you intended to print. This matters in variable data security printing, since there is information encoded there. My friend and colleague Marie Vans explores this issue in another NIP25 paper posted here:

http://www.hpl.hp.com/techreports/2009/HPL-2009-318.html

The approach, structural pre-compensation, is also known as "trimming" or "shaving". Interestingly, without it, not only are the barcodes harder to read, but the would-be counterfeiter gets a "free pass".

Cheers,

Steve

Conference Time Part I: Extended Packaging

StevenSimske — Thu, 24 Sep 2009 02:12:00 GMT

It's September. The month when most people's gas bills hit rock bottom. Kids are back in school, harvest is still just sweat and fury in the future. Closed are the pools, open are the schools, and life is good. Too good. So, those wonderful conference organizers have nothing better to do than make us travel. Last week and this, I had the pleasure to present at ACM Doc Eng 2009, IS&T NIP25, and IEEE BIdS. I've already posted the ACM DocEng paper and plugged it a few times on this, my blog, but just to complete the trifecta, it's here:

http://www.hpl.hp.com/techreports/2009/HPL-2009-177.html

This blog focuses, however, on one of the NIP25 papers. It's about how to extend the information you add to packaging by using "semi-covert" variable data printing (VDP) driven layout variability, and it's with my long-time friend and colleague Margaret Sturgill. You'll find the PDF here:

http://www.hpl.hp.com/techreports/2009/HPL-2009-316.html

Thanks to Omer Gila for the invitation to present this work,

Steve

More on Security Printing 09

StevenSimske — Wed, 23 Sep 2009 22:04:00 GMT

IMI’s 6th Annual Security Printing Conference is being held on November 16-18, 2009 at the Sheraton Baltimore City Center Hotel in Baltimore, Maryland, as noted in an earlier blog.

Al Keene has sent me the conference brochure (please see attachment below). A number of my colleagues and friends in the field are presenting, well worth the time if you can go.

Cheers,

Steve

ACM DocEng 2009 Conference (Munich)

StevenSimske — Thu, 17 Sep 2009 12:29:00 GMT

Today is the middle day of the 3-day DocEng 2009 ACM Symposium (not including the Workshop held before the Symposium, which was on document versioning). The website is http://doceng09.cs.unibw.de/, and the program is available at http://doceng09.cs.unibw.de/download/program.pdf. Please contact me on any questions/comments on the conference.

The conference focuses on the engineering of documents. Documents are intentionally crafted information items, such as the "traditional" paper or electronic word processing/form/record. Engineering involves innovation on performance, reliability, system efficiency, etc. Combined, this means working to build efficacious systems focused on the conveyance of information. Now, perhaps you can see how this relates to security printing for brand protection.

My presentation (just finished a couple of hours ago) is posted at: http://www.hpl.hp.com/techreports/2009/HPL-2009-177.html.

The conference is in Munich, and with the long days of talks and meetings, all I've seen of Munich is at night. With Oktoberfest coming this weekend, the streets have not been empty, even though the working day has ended around midnight.

Typical Street Scene

Rathaus

I won't get to stay for Oktoberfest, so these early morning images will have to suffice. Besides, the conference is quite good, regardless of location (it's actually on an Army base!). And, my legs are not the right kind for Lederhosen (http://www.oktoberfest.de/en/).

Cheers,

Steve

IMI's Security Printing Conference, Nov. 16-18, 2009 (Baltimore, USA)

StevenSimske — Sat, 12 Sep 2009 02:41:00 GMT

IMI’s 6^th Annual Security Printing Conference is being held on November 16-18, 2009 at the Sheraton Baltimore City Center Hotel in Baltimore, Maryland.

According to the conference organizer, Al Keene, "The unique annual conference addresses the challenges and opportunities facing the digital printing industry in dealing with security issues and enabling the production of secure documents for a wide variety of applications including business documents, ID’s, currency, brand protection & identification, gaming/event tickets, travel documents, etc. Industry experts will address digital printing technologies’ capabilities and shortcomings relative to printing secure output and the technology options available to enhance the production of secure documents and products. The attached file and our web site www.imiconf.com contain additional preliminary program information."

A conference with a view

This is a solid conference, with a strong security printing agenda. I attended DigiFab 2005 and NIP at this location. Excellent urban harbor atmosphere, to go along with the excellent agenda. Please see the website for details.

Cheers,

Steve

Effect of Copying and Restoration on Color Barcode Payload Density

StevenSimske — Wed, 12 Aug 2009 21:51:00 GMT

Heading to Munich for Oktoberfest? Then why not arrive a little early and join an eclectic and sociable (yes, sociable!) group of document experts for ACM DocEng 2009. Details on how to get there (the conference, that is--I presume you can find Munich) and on the, in my opinion, excellent program (http://doceng09.cs.unibw.de/download/DocEng09-program.0.3-SR.pdf) are provided at:

http://doceng09.cs.unibw.de/

As a teaser, you can get a preview of one of the papers at:

http://www.hpl.hp.com/techreports/2009/HPL-2009-177.html?mtxs=rss-hpl-tr

In this paper, we describe how the proper printing approaches can be as powerful as the print-scan, or "round-trip", cycle on the density of information that you can print and then later recover. This is highly significant as we see the "revenge of the physical" come to play with the ubiquity of high-quality mobile cameras. Should I be able to take a picture of any intentional (i.e. printed, displayed, etc., signage, packaging, labeling) information and connect to further information? The answer is yes. And this paper hopefully helps you find out more about how to do that.

See you in Munich. Bring an appetite for gemutlikeit.

Steve

5th Global Forum on Pharmaceutical AntiCounterfeiting

StevenSimske — Sun, 02 Aug 2009 04:32:00 GMT

Reconnaissance International's 5th Global Forum on Pharmaceutical Anti-Counterfeiting is being held in Miami 24-26 February 2010. Details on the event, including submitting a paper and information on the sponsors, is available at:

http://www.regonline.co.uk/builder/site/default.aspx?EventID=751954

One theme of this conference is in "addressing the role of the patient in fighting counterfeit medicines and related products".

Interestingly, the conference overlaps with Graphics of the Americas (February 25-27, 2010, in nearby SoBe district of Miami Beach), which also features an excellent Brand Protection Conference. See:

http://www.graphicsoftheamericas.com/media/news.html

for details. If one of these conferences isn't enough to get you down to Miami near the end of winter, why not the pair?

Cheers,

Steve