Against the reflex reach for a hologram

Clients often arrive asking for a hologram. It is worth asking what they expect it to do, because the honest answer is frequently “look secure”, and looking secure is not a security property.

The difficulty with any applied optical device is that the public has been trained to accept it as a signal without ever being taught what a genuine one looks like. Someone shown two of them, one authentic and one not, has no basis for choosing. The feature therefore deters nothing except the least motivated imitation, while consuming a large share of the budget.

The alternative

The features that survive scrutiny are the ones with an unambiguous check that requires no comparison: it is either raised or flat; the device either appears when tilted or it does not; the mark is either in the sheet or on it. These are yes-or-no questions that a person can answer without a reference sample.

None of which is an argument against optical devices in general — only against reaching for one first. Specify the checks a person can actually perform, then decide whether anything is left for a hologram to do.