Malaysia’s ePassport recognised as regional ID document of the year

KUALA LUMPUR: The Malaysian Immigration Department received the 2018 Regional ID Document of the Year Award, an acknowledgement for its innovative and class leading Malaysian ePassport.

Immigration Department director- general Datuk Seri Hj Mustafar Hj Ali and Datasonic executive director Steven Ng received the award in Hanoi, Vietnam on Tuesday during the High Security Printing Asia Global Conference 2018 from Dec 3- 5, according to a statement issued on Wednesday on behalf of Datasonic Group Berhad.

The ePassport was jointly developed by the department and Datasonic’s subsidiary, Datasonic Technologies Sdn Bhd.

“It is recognition for the outstanding technical sophistication of a document and for promoting the best in system infrastructure and implementation of a government passport or identity card scheme,” the statement said.

Being the first in the world to develop and introduce ePassport back in 1998, the new version of Malaysian ePassport launched in November 2017 have upgraded security features including an embedded chip in the polycarbonate personal particulars page.

The chip’s new position, as opposed to being in the back cover previously, makes the passport harder to forge and allows data to be read easily.

The new polycarbonate datapage also features a variety of built-in- security elements including three coloured security stitching thread with back-swen lock and the groundbreaking true-colour UV security elements based on the innovative Sealy’s solution by Gemalto, Datasonic’s technology partner.