Holding a B.Com degree from Delhi University, Shikhar has been associated with BS for over six years now and overseas the company’s corporate strategy & management, marketing, and operations.

In today’s digital age, keeping your data private and secure is a prime concern. When you travel international, you need to pass through stringent documentation process as per the applied visa and immigration procedure specific to the visa category that you are applying for. Usually, this entire process takes place either at embassies or at visa service providers.

Leaving all your personal data, identity credentials, financial information, residential information and biometrics with a third party might leave you in a state of conundrum. Handing-over increasing amounts of personal data is now another consequence of seeking safety away from home and hence has a direct relation with visa and immigration processes. Hence, ascribing to the security needs for large amount of personal data, companies are adopting AI mechanism in their business. Application of AI in processing visa is making the process faster & effective, at the same time ensuring privacy and data security.

There’s no denying that adoption of AI is picking-up the pace in various sectors, including visa and consular services. According to industry experts, nearly 80 percent of businesses these days are investing in AI, and by 2020, more than 50 percent of the operations and enterprise data will be managed autonomously. Many software professionals and experts are also of the opinion that practicing AI across industries will give AI software

revenue a phenomenal ascend to $90 billion by 2025.

AI allows you to automate the detection of threat and combat even without the involvement of the humans. Since AI is totally machine language driven, it assures complete error-free cybersecurity services. Moreover, companies have also started to put more resources than ever for boosting AI driven technologies. It’s getting seeped into all departments and industries, enabling impossible digital and data convergence with the blink of an eye.

Implementing an agile IT structure is not only necessary to support all the processes with effectiveness, but also forms the very fabric of doing business in an ethical and responsible way

The visa process outsourcing industry is using AI in various formats like online appointment booking, mobile biometric services, e-Visa, and allied contact center, to name a few. The strength of this technology deployment has significantly enhanced the ability to manage complex workflows for huge volume of data and applications supported by state-of-the-art security measures. AI can analyze all the information made available and is available about the traveller across diverse datasets in public and private domains, and help immigration authorities to take a better informed decision instantly. For example, AI can gather information about the traveller from social media like Facebook, Instagram and other social media platforms, and analyze it to create a social media profile, which can help the immigration authorities to counter terrorism and other threats. AI with self-learning can match with the historical traveller profiles and make a better informed decision, which improves over a period of time.

We are seeing an era of increased digitization, transparency and efficiency, and therefore it is required to create a proprietary technology platform, especially for robustness and scalability, while maintaining the utmost security of client data. For global visa players, abiding by the directives of data security and embassy protocol becomes integral. Thus, implementing an agile IT structure is not only necessary to support all the processes with effectiveness, but also forms the very fabric of doing business in an ethical and responsible way. Considering the inevitable cyber concerns, it has become crucial for Visa providers to increase their security audits, encryption of data, and introduce watertight password control systems.

The significance of privacy and data security has expanded tremendously with the emerging trends in technology. Protection of customer and employee data should be considered the top priority and companies must strive to innovate the processes while quickly adapting to the changing trends.