METHODS AND SYSTEMS FOR SECURE PROCESSING OF PERSONAL IDENTIFIABLE INFORMATION

1 . A method of extracting personal identifiable information from an image of an identification document having a known structure, the method comprising the steps of:

receiving the image in an enhanced security networking environment;

parsing the image into at least one sub-image based on the known structure, the at least one sub-image containing an image of non-personal identifiable information;

associating the at least one sub-image with an identifier;

preparing an exchange package comprising the at least one sub-image and the identifier together with one or more dissimulation images of similar non-personal identifiable information, each dissimulation image being associated with a different identifier;

sending the exchange package to an information extraction service arranged to extract a string of characters from each sub-image and dissimulation image and associate each extracted string of characters to the identifier associated with the image from which the respective string of characters was extracted in order to produce an extracted package; and

receiving the extracted package in the enhanced security networking environment.

2 . The method of claim 1 further comprising the step of:

pre-processing the image to produce a normalized image of the identification document.

3 . The method of claim 2 , wherein the pre-processing comprises one or more of de-skewing, rotating and calibrating the image.

4 . The method of claim 1 further comprising the step of:

selecting a parsing template based on the type of identification document.

5 . The method of claim 4 , wherein the type of identification document can be any one of a passport issued by a specific country, a drivers' license issued by a specific authority, or any other known form or identification document issued by a known authority.

6 . The method of claim 1 , wherein the information extraction service is located outside of the enhanced security networking environment.

7 . The method of claim 6 , wherein the information extraction service is an online information extraction service.

8 . The method of claim 1 , wherein the information extraction service comprises an Optical Character Recognition (OCR) service.

9 . The method of claim 1 , wherein the non-personal identifiable information is any one of a date of birth, address, document issue date, first name, last name or place of birth.

10 . The method of claim 1 , wherein the image is received using a secured communication protocol.

11 . The method of claim 10 , wherein the secured communication protocol is Hypertext Transfer Protocol Secure (HTTPS).

12 . A system for extracting personal identifiable information from an image of an identification document having a known structure, the system comprising:

a processor; and

at least one non-transitory memory containing instructions which when executed by the processor cause the system to:

i) receive the image in an enhanced security networking environment;

ii) parse the image into at least one sub-image based on the known structure, the at least one sub-image containing an image of non-personal identifiable information;

iii) associate the at least one sub-image with an identifier;

iv) prepare an exchange package comprising the at least one sub-image and the identifier together with one or more dissimulation images of similar non-personal identifiable information, each dissimulation image being associated with a different identifier;

v) send the exchange package to an information extraction service arranged to extract a string of characters from each sub-image and dissimulation image and associate each extracted string of characters to the identifier associated with the image from which the respective string of characters was extracted in order to produce an extracted package; and

vi) receive the extracted package in the enhanced security networking environment.

13 . The system of claim 12 wherein the system is further caused to:

pre-processing the image to produce a normalized image of the identification document.

14 . The system of claim 13 , wherein the pre-processing comprises one or more of de-skewing, rotating and calibrating the image.

15 . The system of claim 12 , wherein the system is further caused to:

select a parsing template based on the type of identification document.

16 . The system of claim 15 , wherein the type of identification document can be any one of a passport issued by a specific country, a drivers' license issued by a specific authority, or any other known form or identification document issued by a known authority.

17 . The system of claim 12 , wherein the information extraction service is located outside of the enhanced security networking environment.

18 . The system of claim 17 , wherein the information extraction service is an online information extraction service.

19 . The system of claim 12 , wherein the information extraction service comprises an Optical Character Recognition (OCR) service.

20 . The system of claim 12 , wherein the non-personal identifiable information is any one of a date of birth, address, document issue date, first name, last name or place of birth.