For many people, security means personal, physical or property protection, but for others, it’s protection of a different sort – the protection of revenues and profits. For Blue Mountain, the discovery that their season passes were being forged was actually made when they tried to protect some skiers who were skiing unsafely and out of bounds. When the skiers’ season passes were checked, it was discovered the passes were forgeries. During the 2000/2001 ski season several forgeries were discovered. "I would guess that we were only catching 10% of the forgeries. The police traced one back to a man living in Ottawa. He was reproducing passes to any ski hill and selling them to individuals," said John Gowers, Computer Services Manager with Blue Mountain Resort.

Although Blue Mountain re-designed the card each year to avoid fraud, the 4-5 months of the ski season was long enough to duplicate the cards with modern-day scanners and a good bubble-jet printer and sell the duplicates for most of the ski season. At a glance in a long ski line-up, they appeared authentic, but on closer examination the colours were not as sharp. Day pass forgery was not a problem because the colours change daily and the specific date can be printed on the ticket in large letters.

What was needed was an added security feature that was difficult to duplicate, but also easily recognized at a glance. Gowers searched the Internet for a solution. He found one that was being used at concerts in the U.K. However, it would require all operators to wear special sunglasses to view an image on the tickets or cards. The advantage was that it could be used for day as well as season passes, but the process and equipment were expensive.

Gowers also looked into other possibilities such as holograms and specially-imprinted foils at a trade show. Blue Mountain then called Identicam Systems, a national photo identification company that had supplied their cards, ribbons and supplies since 1995. Identicam suggested IdentiGuard, a holographic-type product, would be the most difficult to duplicate and could be easily distinguished in a line-up.

Other resorts were also having similar problems and IdentiGuard was suggested to other ski areas in the Intrawest chain. Mont Tremblant, Stratton Mountain and Blue Mountain all agreed to use the new card with Intrawest’s logo.

So, how successful was the new program? Not one fraudulent season’s pass was discovered this season. Making authentic cards more easily recognizable and more difficult to duplicate seemed to deter any attempts at counterfeiting, thanks to IdentiGuard.