Governments and corporations require high security documents to prevent tampering, alteration and to allow for easy recognition of the genuine item.
Such products include cheques, gift certificates, tax documents, financial documents, government bonds, examination / company certificates, fiscal stamps and ballot papers for local and national elections.
The strength of a document is in the combination of security features. If your document contains 5 or more elements of security and other institutions are only using 3 you can be fairly certain that they will be targeted before you. The counterfeiter will always look for the easiest and most cost-effective route. Skimp on budget, you skimp on security.
We're not recommending you have every possible security feature known to man; the cost of production would be prohibitive. What we do recommend is that you need to balance the cost against security. The question you need to ask yourself, as a security printing buyer, is "how much would it cost to remedy a breach of security?”
From our experience, people are very quick to discount (so called) expensive security features that are non-essential until the time comes that illegal copies are being distributed. Only then does the budget increase, as you "can't afford the embarrassment again" and increase the security on the second version of your document.
You need to make a checklist of the different elements that you feel would be suitable for your job. Important considerations need to be made on the following:
- Security Papers
- Security Design
- Security Inks
- Serialization and numbering
- Personalization
- Quantity
