TECH GUARD: HP aims to make paper forgeries a thing of past

Seema Singh, Bangalore
Mint

In 2008, one batch of students at the Indian Institute of Information Technology in Bangalore (IIIT-B) graduated with unique mark sheets—they were tamper-proof. The mark sheets carried a bar code, generated by a new technology from Hewlett-Packard (HP) Labs India. The bar code could be printed on paper by any printer and scanned by normal scanners.

The test run at IIIT-B of the Trusted Hardcopy Solution (THS) is part of a programme at HP Labs, the advanced research group of the technology corporation Hewlett-Packard Development Co. Lp, that is trying to address paper-based frauds which—it estimates, globally cost firms $660 billion (Rs 32 trillion) annually.

The innovation allows companies and institutions to use their existing methods of generating paper documents with machine readable data or two-dimensional bar codes, printed on them.

“Most of the existing technologies in this space either address the digital world or the paper world, but this one (THS) bridges the gap, so we decided to be the experimental site,” said S. Sadagopan, director of IIIT-B.

Since the 1990s, digital watermarking technology has been largely used for ensuring data integrity, but THS is different in the sense that it tests the content, whereas the former tests the veracity of the source of the document. Moreover, its low cost and simplicity make it useful for large institutions; forgery of documents is a growing concern, said Sadagopan.