- Verificient Technologies, a leading Trusted Identity-as-a-Service (TIaaS), the platform for identity verification and authentication, has made an aggressive expansion of its business in India with its innovative and patented solutions that aim at serving various sectors including higher education, talent acquisition & recruitment and remote labor-force management (virtual work at home agents). The company has put in place an all India roadmap to tap the opportunities that exist in bringing integrity to these sectors by ensuring there is conduct and fairness of online assessments and identity verification for: online education and school entrance exams, helping to pre-filter qualified candidates that can demonstrate their competency and skill sets in pre-employment assessments for employers and also ensuring remote-at-home workers can work from home, while having a clean desk environment that prevents the risk of data breaches and deters fraudsters from taking advantage of their employers.
Verificient Technologies, utilizes biometrics, computer vision, and machine learning to deliver a world-class solution in trusted identity verification and digital remote monitoring/invigilation. The company’s patented solutions: Proctortrack™, FreshHire™, and RemoteDesk™ go beyond using artificial intelligence with biometric authentication and identity verification, to ensure the individual who’s supposed to be authorized to have access to content and data, is the individual verified in real-time anytime, anywhere on demand.
With the catapulting growth of online education and online examinations in India, recent cases of mass-cheating have come even more to into the limelight, as figures are becoming unimaginable and continuously suggests cheating has been the entitled norm in India’s education system and continuing to spawn into the employment sector. Every day, there’s a story in the headlines in the newspapers or television that depicts the ramped growth of cheating, and how it affects all aspects of India’s society. From over 10 lakh of students in Uttar Pradesh not even showing up to take entrance exams due to the crackdown of cheating in entrance exams as reported by Times of India and Hindustan Times, to students not being allowed to wear shoes and socks and even having the sleeves of women nursing students cut off to stop cheating during their exams as told by The Sun, Metro UK and The Straits Times.
But the problem of cheating becomes even worse when it affects employers seeking qualified candidates that really qualify and deserve the job posting. Especially, when it comes to government positions, as when the government loses confidence in the integrity of their employment testing, cheating becomes a severe problem for the whole country. Examples of government employment cheating are described by The Guardian where Indian army candidates are made to take exams in their underwear, to turning off mobile internet coverage during the Police Constable Exam in most Rajasthan cities, to curb cheating as highlighted in India.com.
To help prevent these type of situations with employers, Verificient Technologies works closely in conducting pre-employment assessments to ensure it’s the right candidate that can demonstrate their competency and skill-set, for a particular vacancy, and actually qualified for the job role. “This is vital and a very high stakes process for large international organizations that work globally and have very competitive job positions to fill. The reward for these candidates are often life-changing and can lead to a very long-term position. Our experiences in being the exclusive provider for the United Nations in employment testing, not only gives us credibility that our technology can be used by the 193 member states anytime, anywhere on-demand globally, but that the United Nations rely on our technology to help pre-filter the right candidates for the right job role, in a very rigorous and systematic method to achieve their hiring goals”, described Tim Dutta, CEO of Verificient Technologies. “And then there’s the cost savings associated in travel expenses, hiring proctors/invigilators, scheduling and tracking candidates, conducting post assessment reviews and etc. All these tasks are now streamlined with our technology, as we provide all the analytics to our customers on our platform, very quickly, efficiently and effectively.”
As a result, these rampant cheating practices diminish the credibility of earned credentials online and further tarnish the educational and employer brands associated with students and job applicants that cheat or falsify their qualifications. “In the last five years, we’ve implemented our patented identity verification technology to many of the largest and most successful online education programs in the world like: Penn State University, Purdue University, Rutgers University, New York University, University of North Carolina, Wisconsin University, Pepperdine University and other educational institutions to successfully curb cheating, and in fact, deter cheating from ever occurring in the first place. We’ve not only helped to bring integrity to these programs but helped them to scale with artificial intelligence, that takes away the problems of manually scheduling invigilation sessions with manual human proctors or in physical testing centers in large metro cities, that often prevent access to candidates in rural areas, that usually provide inconsistency and inaccuracies in the way the invigilation testing sessions. And especially, the inaccuracies of working with live invigilators that intrude on the privacy of the candidate’s computers and personal space”, explains Tim Dutta
Verificient Technologies Proctortrack has been the exclusive remote proctoring / invigilation partner and also helped scale the most famous Computer Science degree program in the world (OMSCS), partnering with Udacity and Georgia Tech. Proctortrack is also the exclusive invigilation provider to publicly traded companies like 2U, who is the world’s largest Online
Program Management providers that manage over 56 of the top online graduate programs in the world. Proctortrack is also the exclusive online proctoring / invigilation service on the world famous MOOC platform edX for Georgia Tech and Notre Dame University. And these are only some of the high profile global educational institutions that rely on the use of the Proctortrack identity verification platform for student verification and authentication to grant credit and full master’s degrees online to students.
“Our technology is not really about catching cheaters; we actually hope to act as a deterrence. Instead, we strive to bring integrity for the online degrees and credentials. How do institutions ensure that candidates, who take online programs, be compared to candidates that are taking traditional face-to-face programs? Should both their degrees have the same value and rigour?
How do we know who took the course? Who deserves the credit? And who actually took the exam to receive the credits?
As a by-product, employers will only value these online degrees and credentials if they know that there was a strict system and rigour in place for identity verification and authentication. That’s where Proctortrack’s technology comes in to fill that void.
These are the same questions and concerns Indian online programs and MOOC content platforms will need to accomplish to ensure a successful adoption and acceptance of candidate credentials for employers.
At Verificient, our thesis is: Credentials equal Currency, and those Currencies result to Upward Mobility. And that is the process that we facilitate for the candidate – by providing the “good housekeeping seal” for that assessment, and make sure the institution’s integrity rigor was followed”, explains Tim Dutta.
Verificient Technologies products hopes to help curb progressively rising cases of unethical, illegal and fraudulent practices during examinations in India, and bring integrity for online degrees and credentials for the marketplace. Now is the time for more and more National Testing Agencies bring entrance exams online and computer based in India, as it’s no longer an option.