Security printing

Security printing is the field of the printing industry that deals with the printing of items such as banknotes, cheques, passports, tamper-evident labels, security tapes, product authentication, stock certificates, postage stamps, and identity cards. The main goal of security printing is to prevent forgery, tampering, or counterfeiting. More recently many of the techniques used to protect these high-value documents have become more available to commercial printers, whether they are using the more traditional offset and flexographic presses or the newer digital platforms. Businesses are protecting their lesser-value documents such as transcripts, coupons and prescription pads by incorporating some of the features listed below to ensure that they cannot be forged or that alteration of the data cannot occur undetected.

A number of technical methods are used in the security printing industry. Security printing is most often done on security paper, but it can also occur on plastic materials.

Features detectable by humans

Secured documents, such as banknotes, use visible and tactile features to allow humans to verify their authenticity without tools. The European Central Bank (ECB) recommends feel, look, and tilt: First check the tactility of the banknote (including the substrate), then look at the optical design and finally the characteristics of certain optical features when tilting the banknote in relation to the incident light.

In general, the introduction of a new banknote series is accompanied by information campaigns describing the design and the security features. Several central banks also provide mobile apps explaining the characteristics by interactive methods and enrich them by animated effects.