Workforce
Verification

Socure’s Workforce Verification is the process of confirming that job applicants are real, legitimate individuals at the very start of the hiring funnel by validating identity, device, and behavioral signals against authoritative data to detect and block fake or manipulated applicants before they progress. For employees, it extends this assurance into ongoing access to systems, data, and payroll through persistent identity checks, sanctions and watchlist screening, and risk-based step-up verification when needed.

Socure’s comprehensive Workforce Verification program uses a multi-layered approach to vetting each candidate that includes: 

• Address Risk to validate address deliverability, type, and residency signals; estimate name‑to‑address correlation; and flag risky locations (e.g., P.O. boxes, commercial, or vacant) early in the funnel to reduce ATO and misdelivery.
• Digital Intelligence to bind identities to trusted devices and analyze IP, connection, and session behavior for anomalies such as emulators, remote tooling, VPNs/proxies, and out‑of‑pattern interactions in real time.
• Email Risk to predict email‑centric fraud and verify name‑to‑email ownership using deliverability, domain reputation, age, and bot/gibberish patterns, returning a risk score and reason codes for workflow automation.
• Phone Risk to evaluate fraud risk and name‑to‑phone correlation from telco tenure, carrier and line type, SIM/porting events, and velocity signals, enabling safer OTP delivery and account‑change flows.
• Sigma Identity Fraud + Graph Intelligence to fuse machine‑learned third‑party fraud decisions with graph insights that expose risky linkages and velocity across names, phones, emails, addresses, and devices—returning a highly predictive score with feature‑level intelligence and explorable connections for faster investigations.
• Sigma Synthetic Fraud to uncover fabricated and manipulated synthetic identities by correlating PII, proof‑of‑life, and cross‑network behaviors—stopping synthetics at onboarding and across the lifecycle.
• Verify Plus to perform KYC/eKYC with field‑level validations and a full best‑matched identity profile via API, automating exception handling, normalizing PII, and enabling audit‑ready, explainable decisions across markets.
• Global Watchlist Screening and Monitoring to screen and continuously monitor sanctions, PEP, enforcement, and adverse media with an AI‑driven, two‑stage matching approach that cuts false positives, prioritizes critical alerts, and keeps portfolios compliant in real time.
• SocureID is a single, persistent identity anchor that connects every email, phone, address, device, behavior, KYC result, and watchlist decision into one profile within Socure’s global identity graph, removing duplicates and preserving context over time.

This unified profile powers Workforce Verification by tying applicant screening and ongoing employee checks to the same resolved identity, ensuring consistent and auditable risk evaluations, step-ups, and approvals from hiring through access and payroll. 

For candidates who pass initial screening and successfully progress through their interviews, one final element of Workforce Verification is then employed before an offer of employment is sent out and any company equipment or access is granted:

• Document and biometric verification to authenticate government IDs, match selfies to ID headshots, and detect presentation attacks in real time. Socure’s DocV completes over 95% of verifications in 1.26 seconds and performs NIST PAD Level 2 passive liveness checks to stop deepfakes and spoofing. 

By layering these controls, companies create a secure, low-friction foundation for hiring at scale.

A modern workforce verification program helps prevent sophisticated identity fraud schemes that exploit hiring vulnerabilities, protecting companies from fake applicants. Following the rapid rise of remote hiring, there have been incidents where fraudsters use AI tools to create convincing fake personas, manipulate video interviews, and submit falsified documents to secure employment.

Workforce verification detects and stops a wide range of employment fraud, including: 

• Application Fraud: Falsified resumes, fake credentials, and forged employment history designed to misrepresent qualifications and experience.
• Deepfake Video Interviews: AI-generated faces and voices used during virtual interviews to impersonate real people or create fictional candidates
• Synthetic Identity Fraud: Completely fabricated identities created using combinations of real and fake personal information to bypass traditional background checks
• Document Forgery: Digitally altered or counterfeit government IDs, educational certificates, and professional licenses
• Insider Threat Infiltration: Bad actors seeking employment specifically to access proprietary data, commit corporate espionage, or facilitate future cyberattacks

Though it’s often associated with online hiring, workforce verification processes also apply to in-person interviews and onboarding to detect sophisticated document fraud and ensure the person presenting credentials matches their claimed identity through biometric verification and real-time document authentication.

Workforce verification supports regulatory compliance by embedding identity validation directly into hiring workflows. The verification process supports regulatory requirements such as CIP/KYC, AML, and sanctions screening by screening individuals against global watchlists and adverse media with high accuracy and automation. 

Socure’s Global Watchlist Screening with Monitoring improves match precision and lowers false positives versus legacy solutions, reducing manual effort and strengthening auditability with explainable AI and case management.

Identity verification also underpins broader compliance programs by proving “who” is accessing sensitive environments and by documenting defensible, risk‑based controls across the employee lifecycle.

Weak identity controls in hiring processes can lead to unauthorized access to sensitive systems, data exfiltration, payroll leakage, customer data, and long-tail regulatory and reputational harm. In healthcare, for example, HIPAA enforcement can include millions of dollars in losses when protected data is breached, underscoring the stakes when identity and access fail.  

Additionally, hiring unverified candidates can lead to inflated payroll expenses due to “ghost employees” or fraudulent salary payouts. Cybercriminals may also embed themselves within organizations for the purpose of facilitating larger-scale attacks, such as ransomware or insider trading schemes. Even a single oversight can result in legal consequences and years of reputational damage.

Traditionally, HR teams have had to manually review IDs, cross-check resumes, and conduct lengthy background checks in a process that can delay onboarding by days or weeks. Automated workforce verification accelerates time-to-hire by replacing manual ID checks and fragmented vendor workflows with instant, accurate decisions and streamlined step-up when risk is detected.

By eliminating fraudulent applicants early in the process, recruiters can focus their time on qualified candidates instead of wasting resources on impostors. This improves overall hiring efficiency, reduces operational costs, and enhances the candidate experience by providing faster, more transparent onboarding.

Socure’s Workforce Verification integrates with HR platforms, payroll systems, job boards, and applicant tracking systems (ATS) through a flexible API framework. Identity checks can be triggered at critical points in the hiring cycle, such as when an application is submitted, before interviews, or during onboarding, without disrupting established workflows. 

Results flow back instantly into the tools recruiters and compliance teams already use, removing the need for manual data transfers or parallel processes. This seamless integration accelerates verification, reduces administrative overhead, and ensures a consistent, secure candidate experience across the entire hiring pipeline.

Traditional background checks emphasize history (records and credentials), while Socure validates the person and their digital identity upfront. Socure deploys at the point of application, blocking more than 70% of all fraudulent applications before they ever reach a recruiter’s desk. The platform uses patented two-stage risk scoring, advanced document authentication, biometrics, device intelligence, and behavioral analytics to confirm that each candidate is a real, verified individual. 

Socure matches identities with 20% greater accuracy than legacy processes, reduces false positives by 30%, and delivers real-time results in just two seconds. With automated compliance reporting and an AI Copilot that cuts manual reviews by 78% and case review times by 80%, Socure streamlines hiring while providing unmatched security and regulatory assurance.

Yes. Teams can configure verification thresholds, step-up triggers, risk tolerances, and workflows based on industry regulations, job role sensitivity, and internal policies. Offering specialized phone, email, and physical address verification modules, as well as solutions for document verification and synthetic identity fraud, Socure enables hiring departments to select exactly the tools they need to maximize compliance and accurately verify every hire. Additionally, Socure’s RiskOS™ platform offers global identity verification, enabling secure and compliant onboarding across more than 190 countries.

Socure’s Workforce Verification protects organizations not just at the point of hire, but throughout the entire employee lifecycle. Organizations often need to re-verify their workforce, such as after mergers and acquisitions, regulatory audits, or in response to emerging fraud threats. With Socure, you can perform continuous or periodic workforce verification to ensure every employee remains legitimate, authorized, and compliant over time.

This is especially critical for industries handling sensitive data, where insider threats or outdated credentials pose significant risks. Re-verification also helps identify dormant or fraudulent employee records that may have slipped through earlier hiring processes. 

By extending workforce verification beyond onboarding, Socure delivers an ongoing layer of protection, safeguarding workforce integrity, reducing insider risk, and ensuring compliance at every stage of the employee lifecycle.

Yes, Socure’s Workforce Verification fully supports contingent workers, including contractors, temporary staff, and gig workers. These roles often carry higher onboarding risks due to shorter vetting cycles, remote hiring practices, and rapid systems access. Fraudsters exploit these vulnerabilities to infiltrate organizations and gain entry to sensitive systems or data.

Socure closes this gap by ensuring every contingent worker is thoroughly verified before access is granted. The platform is built for speed and scale, making it ideal for gig platforms, staffing agencies, and employers managing seasonal or high-volume hiring surges.

By applying the same rigorous identity checks to non-traditional workers as to full-time employees, organizations eliminate a common security gap and maintain consistent compliance standards across their entire workforce. This helps protect businesses from insider threats and reinforces stronger trust in the extended workforce ecosystem.

Socure’s Workforce Verification solution integrates seamlessly with leading HR, recruiting, and workforce management platforms, bringing advanced identity verification and fraud prevention directly into existing hiring workflows. The result is a secure, streamlined hiring process that protects organizations while improving the candidate experience.

Integration is available via a hosted user interface, API, or SDK, giving organizations complete flexibility to design verification workflows that match their unique needs.  From the moment the application is submitted, Socure evaluates key identity risk signals such as phone, email, device, geolocation, behavior, and education attributes. 

• Trusted applicants move quickly through the process with priority approval.
• Flagged applicants are stepped up to document and biometric checks via Socure’s DocV or manual review. 

This adaptive, risk-based approach eliminates unnecessary friction for good candidates, accelerates hiring decisions, and ensures employers can hire with confidence, at scale, and with certainty.