PodChats for FutureCIO: Intelligently verifying digital identities

Oxford Languages define identity as the fact of being a person or thing. According to the World Bank ID4D data, over a billion people around the world do not have an official proof of identity. In Asia-Pacific up to 20% of the population lacks an ID. Even as governments race to implement national digital identities, private sector service providers like banks or insurance are not always able to make use of these ID system features, even where the public entities can do so. In less develop sectors of economies, the challenge is even more significant reflecting broader gaps in digital infrastructure, capacity, access and literacy. Juniper Research estimates that by 2024, governments around the world will have issued 5 billion digital identity credentials. The question becomes will private sectors embrace these by then. The follow-up question to this – how do we securely access, use and manage these identities.In today’s PodChats for FutureCIO, we are joined by Quah Zheng Wei, Chief Executive Officer and Co-founder, Accredify, to talk about digital identities and what he calls verifiable identity.1.                   Let’s start with a base and move from there. Define for us identity in the context of today’s digital economy? How many identities can one person have that can be used to authenticate him or her?2.                   What is verifiable identity? What is/are the problems it aims to solve? Is this the only approach to solving the same problem?3.                   Who owns the identity in this verifiable identities? Where does it sit in an organisation’s identity security strategy?4.                   What are the benefits of this solution at IT/tech level, user level, from perspective of security, and from compliance perspective?5.                   Will this use of verifiable identity introduce latency, friction to the user experience?6.                   Given that there are many approaches to verifying an identity, how does an enterprise decide which verifiable identity solution providers when looking to introduce verifiable identity as part of its security strategy.