8 Essential Questions for Your Workforce Identity Verification (IDV) Vendor

Choosing the right identity verification (IDV) partner is one of the most critical security decisions you'll make. As organizations fortify their defenses, it’s clear that verifying the identity of your workforce requires a fundamentally different approach than verifying customers.

The stakes are simply higher. For customer verification, the primary goal is often a smooth, low-friction sign-up process. For your workforce, the goal is ironclad security to prevent a breach. The reality is that many IDV solutions on the market are repurposed customer onboarding tools, not purpose-built platforms designed to stop a skilled attacker from impersonating an employee.

This guide is designed to help you look beyond the surface-level features and assess whether a vendor can truly meet the security demands of a modern enterprise. Use these questions to find a genuine partner and a solution that is truly workforce-grade.

Core Capabilities and Security

The foundation of any IDV solution is its ability to accurately verify an identity while defending against advanced, modern attacks.

1. How do you protect against deepfakes and other advanced impersonation attacks?

To protect against modern threats, your first question should focus on a vendor's strategy for tackling sophisticated fraud. Threat actors now use AI to create deepfakes for both presentation attacks (showing a fake image to a camera) and injection attacks (bypassing the camera to feed a fake video stream directly into the system).

A workforce-grade solution should deliver:

• Advanced Liveness Detection: The best solutions employ sophisticated liveness checks to distinguish between a live person and a spoof like a mask or recording. 
• Injection Attack Prevention: A vendor should offer technology that prevents attackers from bypassing on-device cameras, making it nearly impossible to inject a deepfake into the verification stream.

2. What verification methods do you offer beyond a simple document check?

While document verification is essential, a resilient IDV platform must offer a wide array of options to create a multi-layered defense and ensure all employees can be verified successfully.

A top-tier vendor should provide a flexible framework that includes:

• Geolocation and IP Intelligence: A modern IDV solution should analyze passive risk signals like the user's IP address and device location.
• Biometric Matching: Comparing a user's live selfie to the portrait on their government ID is a necessary feature for modern verification.
• Workforce-Specific Workflows: The most innovative solutions provide methods uniquely suited for an enterprise environment. One such powerful, context-aware method is manager attestation, where a supervisor can digitally vouch for an employee's identity through secure chat or video call.

Deployment and Integration

A solution's value is directly tied to how well it integrates with your existing technology stack without causing major disruptions.

3. How does your solution integrate with our key workforce workflows and technology stack?

To avoid creating information silos and clunky workarounds, an IDV solution's value multiplies when it is deeply embedded into the systems where identity is most critical. For maximum efficiency and security, a vendor should offer:

• IAM and IdP Integration: Out-of-the-box connectors for major Identity and Access Management (IAM) and Identity Provider (IdP) platforms like Okta, Microsoft Azure AD, and Ping are crucial for managing employee access and credential resets.
• Applicant Tracking Systems (ATS): To combat candidate fraud early in the hiring process, integrations with ATS platforms to verify an applicant's identity, ensuring the person you interview is the person you hire are important.
• Help Desk and Ticketing Systems: The ability to integrate into your existing help desk or ticketing platform is essential for securely handling high-risk workflows like password and MFA resets.
• SIEM Integration: A vendor should be able to seamlessly integrate with your SIEM systems. This allows your security team to feed identity event logs into a centralized platform for auditing, threat analysis, and compliance monitoring.
• Standards-Based Integration: Look for solutions built on open standards like OIDC and SAML, as this ensures broad compatibility and future-proofs your investment. 

4. What is the deployment process like, and what resources are required from my team?

The deployment model should align with your organization's infrastructure and technical capabilities. A cloud-native platform offers superior scalability and easier integration. For organizations looking to address urgent threats, it's best to prioritize vendors that offer ready-to-use solutions rather than a lengthy, resource-intensive implementation project.

The User Experience

Security measures should empower productivity, not hinder it. The employee experience is paramount for adoption and success.

5. What is the end-user journey like for initial verification and future re-verifications?

The process should be fast, intuitive, and require minimal effort from the employee. The best user experience is achieved through:

• App-less Workflows: Forcing users to download a separate application creates unnecessary friction. A vendor should offer app-less web experiences that allow users to complete verification on any device with a browser.
• Seamless Re-verification: It is critical that a solution is designed to handle re-verification and the re-binding of an identity to a new device. Products that treat every verification as a one-time event are poorly suited for managing the employee lifecycle, where device changes are common.

6. Do you support flexible workflows for different risk levels and use cases, like help desk support?

A one-size-fits-all approach to identity verification is inefficient. A modern IDV platform must allow for fully customizable and configurable workflows that can be tailored to specific use cases and risk levels. For example, a vendor should be able to integrate with your call center operations. This allows help desk agents to securely trigger a verification flow before performing high-risk actions like a password reset, which is a common vector for attack.

Security, Compliance, and Data Privacy

Handling sensitive employee data requires the highest, non-negotiable standards of security and certified compliance.

7. What are your security certifications and how do you ensure compliance with data privacy regulations?

A reputable vendor must demonstrate its commitment to security through widely recognized, independent certifications. You should require proof of:

• Security and Trust Certifications: SOC 2, ISO, and FIDO2 certifications are essential benchmarks.
• Regulatory Compliance: The solution must support compliance with data privacy laws like GDPR and CCPA, as well as regulations like HIPAA.
• Identity Standards Adherence: The platform should be compliant with identity standards from NIST, ideally up to Identity Assurance Level 3 (IAL3) for the highest-risk environments.

8. How do you store and protect our employees' personally identifiable information (PII)?

A vendor's data handling policies are a direct reflection of its security posture. The ideal approach is one that minimizes your organization's data exposure. You should look for a vendor that:

• Employs Strong Encryption: All data, both at-rest and in-transit, must be encrypted using strong standards like AES-256.
• Minimizes Data Retention: The best practice is to hold Personally Identifiable Information (PII) for the shortest time necessary. An attestation-only model, where the raw data is destroyed after a short period, significantly reduces your risk and is superior to models that store PII indefinitely.

Finding Your Workforce Identity Verification Partner

Choosing an IDV vendor is about more than buying a tool; it's about establishing a partnership to navigate evolving threats. By asking these questions, you can identify a provider who understands the unique challenges of workforce security and is committed to your long-term success.

At HYPR, we built our HYPR Affirm solution on these foundational principles. We believe that true workforce security demands purpose-built technology that is both highly secure and easy to use. It’s why leading global organizations, like two of the four largest U.S. banks, trust HYPR to protect their employees and data.