IE-9’s innovative technology provides a novel method to enhance security and anti-counterfeiting capabilities by uniting both visual and machine-readable security components into one optical variable device (OVD). The innovative aspects of IE-9’s technology lies in the fact that a single OVD contains not only an image with holographic visual effects for the first level of security, but a second level of security with stored coded data that requires an independent external reader for decoding. This stored information can range from a variety of formats such as plain texts, PDF files to picture files, but all coded and stored based on the fundamental principles of the diffractive nature of the electromagnetic spectrum. On the macroscopic level, this stored information is visually displayed with unique and highly secure colours with holographic effects similar to high-end security holograms. External readers used for de-coding the stored coded information can be as simple as a smartphone application, or a slightly more sophisticated conventional optical scanner, or a highly advanced and specialised reader with customised abilities.