HISTORY
Quick to trace where falsified documents come from
Establishing the authenticity of documents that are susceptible to fraud, such as birth or marriage certificates, is particularly difficult. The worldwide battle against counterfeit money networks is also complex. These are huge and urgent problems that Andrupos is helping to address by developing an innovative solution to automatically trace security documents to their original sources.
Existing systems can demonstrate the authenticity of a document based on a check of its security features. For many security documents, however, this is already very difficult to do or even impossible. The technology being developed by Andrupos will provide immediate forensic information about the document, including which printer created it, the type of paper used and where forged documents with the same biometric features have been found.
Thanks to it’s unique knowledge in the field of paper and printing techniques, Andrupos has developed a solution whereby a scanner with proprietary software and algorithms can identify specific biometric features of a security document. These features are then cross-checked with a proprietary reference database to determine whether the document in question was produced in the correct, official way. When this has not been the case, the software can determine if and where similar documents have turned up before. Once established, the software will be a valuable tool that will help better counter criminal networks.
First steps towards commercial production
“The investment from UNIIQ will allow Andrupos to develop the first prototype. With this product, we will be able to automatically research and assess physical security documents forensically,” explains Erna Leenaars, who founded Andrupos with her two German partners.
This is the fourth investment by the UNIIQ investment fund since its creation in June of this year. Liduina Hammer, UNIIQ’s fund manager, says, “I am delighted to announce the first investment in the safety and security field. Andrupos is focusing on a clear unmet need in the identification of security documents. With its office on the HSD Campus, which hosts the largest security cluster in Europe, Andrupos is in the ideal location to move ahead with its proposition.”
At the opening of the HSD Campus International Centre last October, Andrupos won six months’ rent-free office space.
FUNDING
Disruptive Technology Ventures invests in Andrupos B.V.
Amsterdam, July 6 2018 – Andrupos receives an investment from Disruptive Technology Ventures, Amsterdam, to bring their automatic document identification software faster to the market. Disruptive Technology Ventures, the Dutch investment fund established by among others the former founders of cybersecurity leader Fox-IT (Ronald Prins and Menno van der Marel), and former KPN and TNT CEO Ad Scheepbouwer, invests in Andrupos to enable the company to go to market faster with their automated identification software for documents susceptible to fraud.
Successful application for an European H2020 FTI project
Andrupos is a spin off of the three companies Viaderna, Epyxs, EINS. These companies received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation program under grant agreement No 760218 (in the programm Fast Track to Innovation)Start date: 01.07.2017
Duration: 30 month
Project website:
www.andrupos-forensics.com
Partners:
Viaderna, NL (Erna Leenaars)
EINS GmbH, GER (Jan Schloen)
Epyxs GmbH, GER (Slavtcho Bonev)
Home Office CAST, UK
Andrupos receives start capital
The Hague, 15 December 2016 – The startup Andrupos is receiving €300,000 from the UNIIQ investment fund to develop software which enables the automatic identification of documents that are susceptible to fraud.
The investment was announced by Ingrid van Engelshoven, The Hague’s alderman for The Knowledge Economy, International Affairs, Youth and Education.
The announcement took place during the annual meeting of The Hague Security Delta (HSD), where Andrupos has been based since November 2016.