What is Covert Product Authentication?
Covert product authentication is a method of checking a product’s and/or packaging’s authenticity by using substances imbedded in a product or packaging that are not visible to a consumer or counterfeiter without specialist knowledge or equipment.
Brandstrike’s covert product authentication solutions use taggants from Stardust Materials LLC. Taggants are microscopic inorganic optical ceramics that operate in the invisible infrared (IR) region of the light spectrum. Because of their small particle size, the Stardust materials have been successfully imbedded into fiber, paper, film, plastic, adhesive and ink.
STARDUST® taggants benefit from the following:
Stable - Stardust taggants are not affected by humidity, extremes of temperature, or aggressive chemical environments and have an almost infinite lifetime.
Safe – Stardust taggants are considered to be safe for food packaging and toys having passed the EN71-3 and TPCH tests.
Secure- Stardust taggants are unique and extremely hard to reverse engineer with all materials developed in-house. They are produced exclusively in the Stardust Materials LLC facilities and distributed to clients under strict chain-of-custody agreements.
Price - highly competitive prices when compared to other product authentication technologies on the market
Simple Authentication - in order to authenticate products or packages, specially designed proprietary detection instruments must be used. These miniature harmless optical devices that resemble remote controls are very sensitive to the presence of miniscule amounts of STARDUST® taggants. These detectors conduct a simple field test of the authenticity with an immediate YES/NO result by lighting up an indicator and sounding a beep when the taggant is found in a genuine item. The transparency of most paper and plastic stock to IR light allows the detection instruments to find the taggant out of line of sight, i.e. hidden beneath packaging in print, inserts, or adhesive.
Applications at work today
- Protective marking on product packaging;
- Tax and post stamps;
- Pharmaceutical labels;
- Apparel and shoe labels;
- Cheques;
- ID documents.
Benefits
- Taggant-impregnated components of a product or packaging retain design appearance;
- No need for additional security devices (e.g. holograms) that would draw unwelcome attention or change the product design;
- An inspector can find and authenticate the product’s security feature effortlessly;
- The lifetime of the protection is practically unlimited;
- The taggant on the product is not degraded by handling, humidity, storage temperature, or direct sunlight;
- The manufacturing process is not made any more complex or expensive by adding the taggant;
- The taggant may also include an additional forensic ("court-admissible") level of security;
- The same exclusive, covert solution applied to different product lines would please investigators and customs officers;
- The solution is inexpensive while the detectors may be supplied free of charge.
Also look at Overt Product Authentication