Abstract: An object or document, such as a credit card, passport, or bank note, is secured against forgery or fraud by the provision of a unique pattern of overlying individual fibers which are embedded in a sheet of transparent base material, and such that the fibers form geometrical configurations which are optically scannable through a surface of the transparent base material. The object or document is thus made unique and impossible to forge, and its authenticity may be verified by initially scanning the geometrical configurations with the scanned information being converted into digital data which may be compressed and encrypted, and then stored in a permanent memory. Following the distribution of the object or document, an inspector may scan the object or document and compare the obtained data with the stored date to thereby verify the authenticity of the object or document.