“Unlike traditional schools, online education doesn’t require a physical presence of the students. This has led to identity fraud allowing academic dishonesty and multi-billion dollar financial aid fraud,” says Jeff Maynard, CEO, President, and Founder, Biometric Signature ID (BSI). “There is a vibrant underground economy of over 1,000 websites that offer homework, exams and even online participation for a fee,” he adds. Additionally, thousands of fraud rings using straw students apply for and receive grant monies that costs billions of dollars in fraud and reduce the pool of aid for all students. The Department of education reacted to these trends by mandating new student ID verification regulations to put a process in place to verify the registered student is the same person who is accessing and completing the online course. Compliance was very poor. But now, after an audit from 8 schools revealed that $222M was given in aid to 42,000 online students, none of whom received an academic credit, new stricter rules on student ID verification have emerged. If colleges and universities don’t adopt stricter student ID verification technology beyond PINs and passwords as detailed in their Final Audit Report February 21st 2014 by the Office of Inspector General, continued access to Title IV funds, a major source of revenues for most schools, may be in jeopardy. However there is good news for schools who are worried about maintaining Title IV funds, BSI offers a compliance package for these new student ID verification regulations.

The company offers a biometric software only solution called BioSig- ID™ that requires NO additional hardware. BioSig-ID captures the way a user moves their finger or mouse on a drawing area that appears on a touch screen or monitor. The unique pattern of speed, direction, length, height, width and angle is captured creating a template that future logins are compared to. “Think of ‘etch a sketch’ but now we capture and store your unique writing pattern,” says Maynard.BioSig-ID distinguishes the user’s pattern from others and grants access to the gradable event or exam only after confirming the identity.