Blockchain-based identity management

“It’s about you controlling your digital identity. Meaning you control what you share (or don’t share) with the various companies and people you deal with.” — Darrell O’Donnell

Identity verification is an inevitable process for many public and private organizations such as banks, telecom, credit companies, and more. And this procedure continues to become trickier and more complex despite being complemented by digitization.

With the world supplying gigabytes of secret information across the Internet in the name of verification, the web has passed into a ground for cybercriminals to use personal data according to their needs maliciously. Businesses acquire your secret information for authentication and store them either in the cloud or on their private server. This central system holding information is then compromised by hackers knowing to excerpt it from this system. Once that is done, your data is out in the web world and manipulated and used according to anyone’s and everyone’s schedule.

The best way to protect your personal information is to have this information under your control. In the worst possible plot, this data will only be compromised if someone gets access to your device on which your information is stored.

Blockchain enables permanence and tamper-proofing of documents; therefore, the technology can help here. Government departments can stock the individuals’ ID proof on a blockchain. The tamper-proof nature means it is entirely safe and reliable, while blockchain’s security features ensure permanence.

1. “Self Sovereign Identity” (SSI)

The Facebook/Cambridge Analytics data crime has shown how technology giants like Facebook and Google authorize and manage users’ digital identities and how risky this can be. Identity management is compound, and due to conventional systems, it is not easy for internet users to supervise their own digital identity.

“Self Sovereign Identity” (SSI) will help as follows:

• Users own and fully command their digital identity.
• Other parties can obtain this identity information, but only with the compliance of the primary user.
• By its very layout, an SSI is trustless, i.e., there is no need to trust a 3rd party provider.
• SSIs are permanent. Therefore, hackers can’t consume them.
• Their portable nature is a significant advantage.

2 Identity management for the decentralized web

Various 3rd party services record every online activity by users. E.g., “Internet Service Providers” (ISPs) paper every site users visit, and 3rd party email tracking services auditor emails. This is achievable only because they have the user’s data, such as their digital identity.

Increasingly, internet users are looking for a distributed web, where they don’t need to section with their personal information to approach services. However, this requires an apparition digital identity management result.

Users should be able to use their digital identity to approve their activity anywhere on the Internet. Moreover, they should not have to contribute it to every internet-based service provider. Blockchain can help here. Users can stock their digital ID on a blockchain network, and internet-based service providers can access that for user authentication purposes.

Birthvenue has been working towards adding value to India’s blockchain ecosystem by contributing not only through our enterprise solutions work but also through our learning and development division. We have built platforms to accommodate multiple use cases and deliver our solutions through robust partnerships with industry leaders.

Reach out to us at admin@birthvenue.in to discuss any potential ideas you might have. We will be able to actualize those ideas for you and bring them close to fruition.

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This is a post in our Medium blog, ‘Blockchain for Everyone.’

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