ODDS – Where Physical and Digital Security Meet

The dates have been announced for next year’s Optical & Digital Document Security conference (ODDS), which takes place 17-19 April 2023 in Prague.

Cited as THE technical conference for physical, digital and virtual document security, ODDS has combined the two highly-respected but previously separate events – Optical Document Security (ODS) and Digital Document Security (DDS) – into one super-event.

The inaugural ODDS was held in Vienna this April, attracting a wide variety of speakers and delegates from the two worlds of physical and digital document security. And, in recognising the symbiosis between the two, it clearly demonstrated the need for an event that brings them together.

According to Conference Chairman Ian Lancaster, ‘ODDS is a conference for our times as we are now living in a world where our virtual identities are as important as our physical identity, where physical secured documents exist alongside the digital world. Our digital identities and digital transactions appear to be usurping the documents that we traditionally carried to prove our identity or make a purchase, while digital health records take on greater importance in a pandemic environment’.

‘But we are still seeing an upswing in the use of cash. And passports are still required to pass border control, he added, ‘which signals clearly that one isn’t replacing the other, but they will co- exist for some time. The security levels already honed and under continuing development for physical documents have a lot to offer the digital document world, but in turn, digitisation has a lot to offer the world of physical documents as well’.

ODDS is targeted at organisations involved in the digital transaction, identity and authentication communities along with specifiers, designers, producers and issuers of secure documents, bringing together the traditional document security community and the younger digital ID and transaction community to exchange information, experience, ideas, and to announce new projects.

The event is geared in particular towards R&D and product development specialists in such organisations, as well as academics and scientists working on pipeline and next generation technologies.

Organisers Reconnaissance International have now issued a call for papers, with the following list of topics offered as guidance.

Digital

• Combatting hackers, denial of service and other internet attacks

• Machine learning, artificial intelligence, post-quantum cryptography 

• Digital currencies: CBDCs and cryptocurrencies

• Serialisation, 2D codes and unique identifiers

• Digital credentials, decentralised identity management, identity ecosystems 

• Interoperability 

• Detection of digital fakes

• Existing in a digital world without a smartphone.

Optical

• New optical technologies and materials 

• Micro- and nano-optics

• Security image design in the physical space

• Optical security in the point-of-sale environment

• Personalisation of optical features

• Durability and permanence of optical features.

Trans-domain

• The digital/physical transition, interface and balance

• Ergonomics and engagement with human senses

• Convenience versus security 

• Enrolment systems

• Security design – optical and digital

• The future travel environment

• Counterfeit resilience assessment, benchmarking, metrics, statistics and analytics 

• Vaccination certificates, health status certification

• ID theft, counterfeit, denial-of-service and fraud countermeasures.

The submissions will be reviewed and selected by a committee of experts and specialists to ensure they meet the standards and criteria of the conference. The deadline for submissions is 30 November 2023, to allow the committee time to thoroughly review them. Some presentation slots will, however, be held open until the last minute, to ensure that the programme is both relevant and current in this fast-moving field of identity verification and financial and transactional management.

Those whose submissions have been accepted will be notified in January 2023.

opticaldigitalsecurity.com