Our New Partnership with Toppan, Will Bring Advanced Identity Protection Services to Japan and the ASEAN Market

By: Gil Perry, Co-founder & CEO, D-ID

Today, we announced a partnership with Toppan, one of the largest companies in Japan and an innovator in privacy and data security services. Teaming with Toppan, we’ll  bring D-ID’s advanced identity protection solutions to the Japanese and ASEAN markets. This is an important step for our company, as we continue to deliver on our vision to provide privacy protection against facial recognition software to everyone around the world. 

Why this is important

Japan is a strategically important market for D-ID not simply because of its size, but because it is a leader in adopting privacy protection regulations. Since 2017, Japan has adopted some of the world’s toughest data privacy laws for businesses that handle the personal data of individuals in Japan (including foreign businesses) and its Act on the Protection of Personal Information, is equal only to the European GDPR.

Our partnership with Toppan seeks to address the growing demand for privacy enhancing technologies in Japan, by offering the most advanced privacy protection solutions to the Japanese market. Built around D-ID’s solutions, Toppan’s new service prevents the identification of personal information by AI facial recognition technology. As a result, personal privacy can be protected and companies can ensure secure data retention and utilization. The joint Toppan/D-ID solution will be deployed to serve a wide variety of businesses related to smart cities, travel and tourism, human resources, healthcare, finance, and more.

Elsewhere around the world, we’re also seeing new initiatives aimed at  securing personally identifiable information (PII). Data privacy protection is becoming a priority for individuals, organizations and governments alike. In the United States, for example, two separate state-level data privacy initiatives have recently been enacted in California and Illinois. We believe these policies are only a first step towards nationwide regulations.

What’s next

Even as data privacy policies become more stringent worldwide, we’re seeing an explosion in the availability of business-critical consumer data – especially image and video data. More than 80% of data traffic is video, and much of that includes identifiable facial images. Facial recognition has become so widespread and accurate that each and every one of us needs to be concerned about how our sensitive biometric data is being collected, accessed and used by businesses. At the same time, businesses are desperately seeking solutions to de-identify and anonymize this data so they can use it commercially while still ensuring customer privacy under these new data protection policies.

Businesses around the world need to ensure compliance and security with their product offerings, but also provide convenience and peace of mind for their customers.. As the world continues to move toward a future of heightened awareness and demand for consumer privacy at the policy level, we will continue to expand our product footprint around the world, and help businesses monetize customer data while remaining compliant with all data protection policies and providing peace of mind for their customers. 

D-ID is now well positioned to serve a wide range of applications stretching from image de-identification that keeps images recognizable to humans, but hides their identity from facial recognition software – to fully anonymized videos that help to protect the identity of data subjects and productize huge amounts of video data while meeting the strictest privacy regulations.