Specops launches Secure Onboarding to verify new-hire identity at first password

Specops, an Outpost24 company, has launched Specops Secure Onboarding, an identity-verification solution designed to close the identity gaps in employee onboarding that AI-assisted impersonation and fake-worker schemes are increasingly exploiting.

The product brings identity verification into the onboarding workflow at the points where the risk is highest: when a new hire sets their first Active Directory password, receives access, or contacts the service desk.

New employees verify their identity using biometric liveness detection and a government-issued ID through a secure enrolment link, and can be re-verified before sensitive service-desk actions are completed.

The identity check supports more than 16,000 document types across 254 countries and territories, the company said, with no end-user data retained. Caller verification for the service desk works inside existing ServiceNow, Jira and other ITSM workflows, with every check logged for audit.

For MSPs and IT teams that provision staff they have never met in person, the product is aimed at replacing the assumption of identity - through manager handoffs, temporary passwords and service-desk requests - with a consistent, verified check across IT, security, HR and service-desk functions.

"For years, organisations could afford to treat onboarding as an administrative process," said Darren James, senior product manager at Specops Software.

"But the fake-worker schemes highlighted in the Verizon DBIR show why that assumption is becoming harder to defend. Stolen identities, remote hiring processes and AI-enabled impersonation are changing where identity risk begins, which is why verification needs to start with the very first password and continue through high-risk support interactions."