Collaboration emphasizes TWAIN’s commitment to security for the
TWAIN Direct scanning standard
Raleigh, NC – August 27, 2024 – The TWAIN Working Group (TWG), a not-for-profit organization providing and fostering a universal public standard for image acquisition sources including smart phone cameras, document scanning devices, multifunction peripherals and folder drives, announced today that TWG and the Coalition for Content Provenance and Authenticity (C2PA) have joined forces to further one another’s mission and adoption through a formal partnership and ongoing collaboration. As the first activity with this new liaison partnership, TWG will be offering technical coaching to integrate the C2PA’s Content Credentials standard into TWAIN Direct document scanning applications during the upcoming TWAIN Direct Developers Day event.
With the explosion of interest in generative A.I. and easy digital content creation, it is more important than ever for content consumers to be able to quickly identify the source information for this content whether it is audio, video or images. From royal family photoshop incidents to fraudulent airline inspection certificates and waybills (leading to gold heists) the negative impact of not including Content Credentials is rapidly increasing. It is fast becoming a requirement for a clear visual symbol as well as automatic content creation checking credentials to determine the source and trustworthiness of this content within digital workflow solutions.
Through its standard, Content Credentials, the C2PA addresses the prevalence of misleading information online through the development of technical standards for certifying the source and history (or provenance) of media content, such as images. Content Credentials provides publishers, creators, and consumers the ability to trace the origin of different types of media. The TWAIN Direct standard supports direct network communication between mobile and/or desktop applications and document scanning devices, including cloud and mobile platforms. TWAIN Direct addresses the need for something simple and direct that expedites application development and provides a customizable and feature-rich scanning experience. Going forward, TWAIN Direct developers will be able to incorporate Content Credentials. Integrating this leading technology into a TWAIN Direct-enabled application will create a complete solution for modern document capture. Both TWAIN Direct and Content Credentials are free and open source.
“Digital content is everywhere. Easy access to content creation tools allows users to be creative by producing high-quality content, which is wonderful”, stated Leonard Rosenthol, Chair of C2PA Technical Working Group. “Yet, with this high-quality content, it is difficult to know what is real and what is digitally created or altered. We created the C2PA standard so that businesses and individuals alike can be assured of the authenticity of content and any actions performed on digital content via the C2PA Content Credentials manifest. Partnering with the TWAIN Working Group is a connection to another community for Capture and Intelligent Document Processing (IDP) that needs our standard to enhance their applications, adding another level of security. The relationship between C2PA and the TWAIN Working Group makes great sense.”
Said Kevin Neal, TWAIN Marketing Committee Chair, “C2PA is being adopted by leading technology providers worldwide. They understand the importance of knowing a document or image is authentic or if it has been altered, as does the TWAIN Working Group. We are thrilled to welcome C2PA as a TWG Liaison partner, and look forward to incorporating their standard and assisting with its development going forward. This will be a huge advantage for manufacturers and ISVs that adopt TWAIN Direct.”
About C2PA
The Coalition for Content Provenance and Authenticity (C2PA) is an open, technical standards body addressing the prevalence of misleading information online through the development of technical standards for certifying the source and history (or provenance) of digital content. C2PA is a Joint Development Foundation project. For more information, visit c2pa.org and contentcredentials.org.
About The TWAIN Working Group
The TWAIN Working Group, established in 1992, is a not-for-profit association of industry leaders who have gathered to create a standard that benefits the imaging industry as a whole. TWAIN's purpose is to provide and foster a universal public standard which links applications and image acquisition devices. The ongoing mission of this organization is to continue to enhance the standard to accommodate future technologies. TWAIN generates multiple opportunities for application developers and users to access information and broaden the standard; through a developer’s forum, main website and online self-certification process. Current members of the TWAIN Working Group include ExactCODE GmbH, JSE Imaging Solutions, P3iD Technologies Inc., PFU America Inc., Kodak Alaris, InoTec – a Datawin GmbH brand, Plustek, Inc., Atalasoft, Microtek, Inc., Dynamsoft, Epson America, Inc., LEAD Technologies and Hewlett Packard, along with Liaison Partners PDF Association, AIIM International and C2PA. More information about TWG Developers Day participation and sponsorship, PDF/R, the TWAIN Direct API and imaging standards can be obtained at pdfraster.org, twain.org and twaindirect.org.
