Evaluation of Identity Matching Software

Abstract

There are several commercially available tools designed to search identity data and many more software suites that contain an identity matching component. Assessing the matching performance of such products is no trivial task, requiring specialist expertise that is available in only a very few commercial or administrative organisations. In the absence of specialist identity matching resources, businesses often look to market position as an indicator of quality.

In many software areas this may be a reasonable approach, but in a market where many businesses are ill-equipped to evaluate the performance of identity matching components, this has lead to a situation where popularity begets wider popularity, with actual functionality often having a surprisingly low impact on this process. As a result, the matching performance of the most widely recognised search-related products often displays little correlation with their popularity in the market.