Move Over, KBA: New State Rules Open the Door to Biometric ID Verification

Move Over, KBA header, Secured Signing

For years, Knowledge-Based Authentication (KBA) has been treated as the default gatekeeper for identity proofing in remote online notarization (RON). Ask a handful of questions pulled from public and credit records, get enough right, and you’re verified. It’s familiar but it’s also increasingly outdated, easy to game with data breaches and social engineering, and frustrating for signers who can’t remember which street they lived on in 2004.

The good news: several states have already written their statutes to allow for something better. Florida and Michigan are two clear examples, and the language they use opens the door to modern, forensic-grade identity verification, not just KBA.

Florida: room to move beyond static questions

Under F.S.A. 117.265(4)(b) and 117.201(6), Florida permits identity proofing through dynamic KBA or an equivalent secure third-party process that complies with recognized standards. The key word is “equivalent” the statute doesn’t lock notaries into quiz-style verification. It leaves space for any process that meets the same security bar, including credential analysis and biometric checks.

Michigan: an explicit nod to biometrics and liveness

MCLA 55.285 Sec 25(6)(d) goes further, authorizing multi-factor identity verification through NIST-compliant technological security methods, explicitly including biometric and liveness verification. In practice, this means a signer’s government-issued ID can be forensically checked and matched against a live selfie or liveness check, rather than relying purely on a KBA quiz.

Why these matters

For notaries, signing agents, and the businesses that rely on RON, this shift matters for a few reasons:

  • Security: Biometric and liveness checks are far harder to spoof than KBA, especially with deepfake and synthetic identity fraud on the rise.
  • Signer experience: Not every signer has a deep enough public/credit record to pass KBA — think younger signers, recent immigrants, or people who’ve moved around a lot. Biometric-first verification removes that friction.
  • Compliance clarity: Knowing exactly which states allow (or require) which methods helps notaries choose the right verification pathway with confidence, rather than defaulting to KBA out of habit.

(This is general information on the statutory language above, not legal advice — always confirm requirements with your own legal counsel or state notary regulator before relying on a specific verification method.)

Secured Signing is already set up for this

This is exactly the kind of shift Secured Signing’s platform was built around. Secured Signing is already a registered notarial provider on-platform, with identity verification tools including forensic ID document checks and liveness/biometric verification, ready to go for signers in states like Florida and Michigan.

There’s no waiting on new integrations or workarounds: the infrastructure for this next generation of identity proofing is already live.

And because signers aren’t all English-speaking, the platform supports identity verification and signing flows in English, French, Spanish, Hebrew, Italian, Portuguese, Korean, Mandarin, Hindi, Arabic, and Cantonese — making compliant, high-security verification accessible to a genuinely global signer base. That language coverage is backed by serious document and biometric infrastructure:

  • Global ID document coverage: capable of verifying more than 16,000 identity documents across 220+ countries and territories.
  • Comprehensive credential analysis: up to 300 security checks conducted during document fraud analysis.
  • Multi-language capability: able to read and extract information from 99.7% of languages found on printed government ID documents, across 140+ languages.
  • Biometric face match accuracy: 99.98% biometric face match accuracy for reliable identity assurance.

If you’re a notary, signing service, or business operating in states moving beyond KBA-only verification, it’s worth checking whether your current platform can keep up. Secured Signing already can.