Specops, an Outpost24 company, has launched Specops Verified ID, an identity verification product designed to stop social engineering attacks at enterprise service desks. The solution combines government-issued document scanning with biometric liveness validation and fraud detection, supporting more than 16,000 document types across more than 200 countries and territories.

Service desks remain a high-value target

The launch comes as identity-based attacks at the service desk continue to generate significant losses for enterprises. The MGM Resorts breach in 2023, which began with a single social engineering call to the IT help desk, resulted in more than US$100 million in losses. The 2025 Marks & Spencer ransomware attack cost the retailer £324 million in lost sales — both incidents stemming from failures at the identity verification stage rather than technical system vulnerabilities.

According to the Palo Alto Networks Unit 42 Global Incident Response Report (2025), social engineering is the leading initial access vector, accounting for 36% of all cyber incidents.

Replacing vulnerable verification methods

Specops identified that current verification methods commonly used by service desks are structurally weak. Knowledge-based questions are guessable or exposed through data breaches, callback and SMS-based verification can be defeated by SIM-swapping, and many agents rely entirely on personal judgment without a structured process.

Specops Verified ID replaces these methods with document-backed biometric verification. Once a user passes verification, the originating workflow resumes — whether that is restoring account access, issuing first-day credentials for new employees, or completing other account recovery processes.

Integrated into existing Specops workflows

The product integrates natively into Specops Secure Service Desk, uReset, and First Day Password, so users complete identity verification within existing processes without additional steps. Specops said the solution is particularly relevant for organisations operating under NIS2, DORA, HIPAA, and NIST compliance frameworks.

“Too many verification methods were designed for convenience, not security, leaving organisations exposed in the workflows where secure access is critical. Specops Verified ID brings high-assurance identity verification into the points of highest risk, helping organisations reduce impersonation risk and close security gaps that traditional methods have failed to address.” — Omri Kletter, Chief Product Officer, Outpost24

Specops currently protects more than 3,500 organisations across 65 countries, with an Active Directory-integrated platform and a database of more than 5.5 billion compromised passwords updated daily.