The show will be a busy couple of days, the company will showcase its LSA™ technology, including mobile scanners and software, designed to further help organisations combat the ever increasing threat of counterfeit documentation and products and diversion of goods, as well as presenting its latest research report on counterfeiting within the secure documents space.

We’re enthused by the collaborative environment, which the show will provide. As an industry we’re all aware that more can be done to protect the consumer and their documentation. Through adopting a multi-layered approach to overt and covert security measures, we can provide industry wide solutions to crack down on the ever-increasing threat of fraud and counterfeit activity.

The results of our 2012 national survey will also be unveiled at the show, analysing consumer behavior and experiences surrounding secure documentation. This research will highlight again why we must come together to fight harder against the threat of counterfeiters throughout the business supply chain.

The show will be held at the Queen Elizabeth II Conference Centre, Westminster, London on the 22^nd and 23^rd May 2012, Ingenia will be on stand G17 and we look forward to seeing you there and giving you an insight into the future of the next generation of anti-counterfeit technology.

Operation Global Hoax II was implemented across 43 countries in an attempt to clamp down on the fraudulent market. The efforts of the numerous participating government agencies must be commended for intercepting an estimated $7 million worth of goods. However, should the responsibility for brand protection and security lie solely at the door of the civil service.

Customs control is always likely to be a government issue. However, brands and manufacturers can offer their support on security matters concerning their products. If somebody unwittingly buys counterfeit designer coat, they don’t hold the government accountable; they look to the designer. With international governments putting so much time and resource into tackling fraud, is there more brands and manufacturers can do?

While a great deal of work already goes into the fight against fraud, anti-counterfeit technology has come on leaps and bounds to help brands protect their identity. Not only does investment in anti-counterfeit technology benefit businesses as it makes products extremely difficult to replicate, but consumers have the added security of knowing that they are buying ‘the real McCoy’.

As this report shows, counterfeiters will stop at nothing to make an easy buck, but new technologies continue to be developed and embracing these new measures can go a long way to making life difficult for criminals.

At the time of the announcement, we at Ingenia took an obvious interest in the argument, specifically, the possible implications this would have on the underground counterfeit world’s ability to use this legislation to its advantage. This has only been inflamed over the past weeks as the legislative plans pick up momentum, with the move now potentially affecting not only the tobacco industry but the alcohol industry as well.

The issue at stake is that while stripping the branding, moving to plain packaging and using only images of the harmful affects of smoking on the front of the packets, may indeed lower smoking rates, it also has the side effect of essentially creating a counterfeiters dream environment. Counterfeiters spend far more time copying packaging than they do products, and clearly plain packaging makes it far easier to produce convincing fakes.

For the Government to take such a significant step in a bid to improve public health, it would be a cruel irony if it actually helped far more harmful products reach consumers.

Such developments mean that a multi-layered approach to anti-counterfeit measures is of critical importance. It is currently estimated the black market value for counterfeit cigarettes is $4bn every year. This covers not only fake cigarettes making it into legitimate supply chains, but also those that have been diverted to avoid taxes. 10% of cigarettes smoked in Europe alone are either counterfeit cigarettes or have been smuggled on to the black market.

The key is to beat the counterfeiters regardless of the legislation that is enforced. By adopting covert technologies, which neither add nor remove anything from a product’s surface, we can ensure that we are keeping the criminals at arms length by not providing anything to copy, as well as enabling brands to track and trace their products throughout the entire supply chain.

Ingenia is committed to helping brands protect their consumers, and as with the recent Avastin cancer drug case this is not just a matter of revenues, but people’s health.

Fake Avastin products have reached oncology departments in the US, through making their way into legitimate supply chains, and whilst high praise must be given to the medical staff who intercepted the drugs, it is more than slightly worrying that the contaminated batches have been allowed to travel so far in the first place.

The legitimacy and quality of pharmaceutical products is paramount to public safety. Not only can fake products pose a threat as they may possess harmful chemicals or be contaminated; one must also consider that particularly in this case, with a drug used to treat cancer, people need it to be the real thing in order to treat immediate health concerns – in many cases a pill that does nothing is as bad as a pill that actively does harm.

For suppliers and distributors, this is an issue that is extremely difficult to manage but carries a great deal of collateral damage. There is no doubt that extensive measures are in place to ensure that these cases are kept to a minimum. However, with around 10% of pharmaceutical products globally being illegitimate, wholesale protection is by no means guaranteed.

One of the major issues with authenticating and tracking pharmaceutical products is that it is becoming increasingly difficult to spot a fake, as products must be kept sealed and protected until they reach their destination. Therefore, once a product has infiltrated a trusted line of distribution, it is often not checked at every stage.

Products must be authenticated as soon as they leave the production line. Not only must they then be regularly checked to make sure illegal products are identified and rejected at any stage of distribution, they must also be tracked to ensure the individual authenticated products are in their correct location for onward sales to consumers.

It is estimated that around 25% of Internet spam is produced by websites selling illegal drugs. Counterfeit medicine is big business, bringing in huge profits for batches of useless and/or harmful products. Thankfully, anti-counterfeiting technologies keep the supply chain one step ahead of the counterfeiting criminals.

Clearly the value of the fake bonds discovered is astonishing, and the investigators that uncovered the fraud should be applauded. However, it does again highlight the issue of the anti-counterfeit measures used on Government bonds and indeed on currency more generally.

Of course the bonds, dated 1934, had to mimic several anti-counterfeiting measures, ultimately this is how the fraud was uncovered. Indeed currency continues to have some of the most complex and multi-layered anti-counterfeit measures of any ‘product’. For instance, the new UK £50 note launched last year featured a host of new and existing measures to continue to fight back against well funded and determined criminal organisations looking to profit from counterfeit currency.

However, are Governments and mints missing a trick? The fact that currency and bonds are printed on paper is one of the oldest concerns of those creating anti-counterfeit measures – but could that actually be the greatest strength in battling against criminals?

The particular orientation of paper fibres in any note or bond produces naturally occurring, random variations that are unique to that particular item.

By using a low power laser to scan over these microscopic variations a code, or signature, can be generated. Just like a human fingerprint, the particular 3D variations of any surface are unique, and so is this laser signature. And just like with a human fingerprint, finding the signature of a note allows you to know exactly which note you have.

This is a completely new approach to anti-counterfeiting measures. Its strength lies in the fact that it measures something that cannot be replicated even by the original producer, never mind by counterfeiters – no matter how well funded and motivated they might be.

Of course this is not to say that such a method should be used instead of any existing methods – it would be foolish to stop doing all of the things that producers already do to protect their products. However, it is a powerful new layer of protection on top of these ‘legacy’ methods. As always, there is no ‘one stop shop’ anti-counterfeiting measure – but with a multi-layered approach Governments and law enforcement agencies can be far more certain of guaranteeing the authenticity of currency and indeed bonds.

DVLA Licences carry a lot of clout in the UK. You can open bank accounts, fly internally and generally say ‘yes this is me’ with a full or provisional licence.

What is more, with a full licence you can take to the roads, and the DVLA expects drivers to pass demanding driving tests before handing them out. Despite these efforts, almost 2000 people were still killed on the roads in 2011. Driving licences in the hands of people who haven’t earned them can be a matter of life and death. It is after all a ‘licence’ to drive.

Counterfeit documentation is a serious business, a tangible threat to public enterprise and in this case safety, however anti-counterfeit technology is available to combat scams such as these.

Ingenia’s Laser Surface Authentication (LSA™) technology analyses items in terms of their own unique surface, effectively DNA sampling individual materials. The items can then be tracked with their own unique serial code that describes their exact surface structure.

LSA™ represents a breakthrough in the fight against fraud, providing a foolproof system to track individual documents and other products. It can be used at each stage of the supply chain, meaning products can be scanned and identified when they are fresh off the production line, then checked by officials, distributors, wholesalers and retailers for authentication.

Producers of sensitive documents and high value products should take heed of such advances, to protect the own interests and those of the general public.

When you look at statistics such as $12.5 billion in economic losses each year is due to piracy in the music industry alone, there is an obvious case to empower more people to take direct action against what is happening in our online world.

The problem a lot of the time, and one we as a company come up against on a regular basis, is the attitude towards counterfeit activity which says it’s a part of our existence, that we need to accept that it’s going to happen.

Part of the same research linked above states that 42% of software running in the world is downloaded illegally with a staggering 95% of music downloaded online, also being illegal.

In the physical counterfeiting sector in which we operate over £10 billion in the UK is “allocated” by brands to being lost through counterfeit activity every year. What is frustrating is that there are plenty of technology options available for organisations to protect their supply chains if they look for them.

Be it physical items being replicated or intangible goods being copied, the counterfeiters need to know throughout every industry that we as consumers will not tolerate the activity anymore, and we can only hope that with the renewed interest in the subject, we see more discussion and action throughout all industries affected by this crime. However with 70% of consumers not seeing anything wrong with online piracy, perhaps some of our industries have more of a chance to change than others.