We build the systems that let people prove who they are.
Globally connected, regionally delivered.
DNH Sahar — also written D&H Sahar — is a globally connected group working across digital transformation, digital identity, biometric devices and security printing, with regional teams delivering across Europe, the Middle East, Africa and Asia Pacific. Our clients are governments, and our work is usually the infrastructure beneath something a citizen never has to think about.
Without proof of identity, it's hard to open a bank account, register a business, receive a subsidy, claim a pension, cross a border legally or enrol a child in school. Identity is the starting point for almost every other right a state provides.
It's a hard balance to get right. Build it too loosely and it can fund ghost workers and false claims. Build it too tightly and it can leave out the nomadic, the displaced, the illiterate and the elderly — often the people who need it most.
DNH works in that narrow band: systems rigorous enough to be trusted, and human enough to reach everyone.
Principles are only worth publishing if behaviour can be checked against them. Two of these cost us money — which is what makes the other four believable.
- 01
Sovereignty comes as standard.
Citizen data belongs to your state. Local hosting, local key custody and local operation are the default. We never hold the signing keys to your citizens' credentials.
- 02
Inclusion is an engineering requirement.
A system that fails on worn fingerprints, cataracts or a missing birth record hasn't found an edge case — it has found the group it leaves out. We report exception rates by province, age and gender, never as a national average that can hide the very gaps it should reveal.
- 03
Standards before products.
ICAO, ISO and NIST conformance first, product selection second. We keep raw biometric images alongside templates, so a future migration stays open to you. Designing for your ability to replace us is deliberate.
- 04
Collect less.
The safest data is the data never captured. We favour minimum viable collection and purpose-bound access — and we'll gently question anything asked for beyond the purpose.
- 05
We'll tell you when to wait.
Some programmes aren't ready to start — the legal basis isn't in place, the registry data is too poor, or the political timeline can't survive the delivery timeline. Our Frame stage exists partly to notice that early, and we'd rather say so in week two than year two.
- 06
We plan the hand-back.
We design our exit from day one, with a transfer date written into the contract. If your team can't run the system without us in three years, we've built the wrong thing.
Most firms in this market do one of these things and subcontract the rest. That works well — until something goes wrong at an interface, when the scanner's SDK doesn't expose the quality score the matcher needs, or the card stock doesn't survive the personalisation line. At that point you can find you have three suppliers and no single owner. Doing all of it ourselves keeps the responsibility in one place.
Services
- Consulting
- Digital Transformation
- Turnkey Solutions
Solutions
- Digital Identity
- Border & Immigration
- Digital Government
- Land Governance
- Transport & Mobility
- Trade & Revenue
- Cybersecurity
- Secure Documents
Divisions
- Biometric Devices
- Security Printing
Regions
- Europe
- Middle East
- Africa
- Asia Pacific
- ICAO Doc 9303
- ISO/IEC 19794
- ISO/IEC 29794
- ISO/IEC 30107-3
- ISO/IEC 7816
- ISO/IEC 14443
- ISO/IEC 18013-5
- NIST SP 800-63
- FIDO2 / WebAuthn
- W3C Verifiable Credentials
- OpenID Connect
- UAE PDPL
- GDPR
Conformance matrices and reference architectures are available under NDA.
Two hours, the people who own the problem, and a whiteboard. You'll leave with a clearer view of your options — whether or not you work with us.