BT/ iPhone 14 Pro reframes Face ID array, a new temperature sensor for Apple Watch 8

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Paradigm

27 min readSep 12, 2022

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Biometrics biweekly vol. 47, 29th August — 12th September

TL;DR

Apple unveiled its new iPhone 14 lineup at its ‘Far Out’ fall event last Wednesday, alongside all the features of its upcoming iOS 16, new Apple Watches, and the second generation of the AirPods Pro
NIST listening to AI community on a proposed risk management framework
Digital identity verification spending to pass $20B by 2027, but security challenges remain
Embedding digital identity in the Jyväskylä Smart City Project
Winning.I accepted into South Korean government’s international expansion accelerator
SiLC doubles its lidar range, and could make face biometric matches farther away
Anonybit biometric data vault, passwordless infrastructure gain two data security certification
TrinamiX partners to build biometric driver authentication capability into vehicle trim
Precise Biometrics’ fingerprint algorithm deployed by Aqara for smart home applications
SecureAuth’s passwordless continuous authentication platform is now available
Aratek launches multimodal biometric software platform for access management, HR tracking
GBT Technologies nears patent grant for real-time 3D biometric security for devices
Norway BankID to go biometric, and international with OneSpan integrations
ID R&D touts passive liveness detection for lower abandonment rates
Feitian launches customizable handheld multi-biometric tablet for use in the field
Liquid Avatar brings biometric verification to metaverse with Aftermath Islands credential
New rugged handheld devices from Coppernic feature Integrated Biometrics fingerprint scanner
Idex Biometrics and European semiconductor leader partner to produce smart cards
Socure increases security, automation of KYC solution
VerifyMe Nigeria begins international expansion, rolls out digital ID orchestration platform
Fingerprint Cards signs up Middle East partner to commercialize biometric payment cards
Alloy raises $52M in further Series C following digital ID partnerships
Dignari selected to provide digital identity and access management services to the US gov for $29M
Funding available for Finland’s self-sovereign digital ID ecosystem pilot project
Humanode public sale dates have been updated
Skeptics of World Bank’s ID4D want more transparency and harm reduction for digital IDs
Experian wins digital ID infrastructure contracts, UK govt digitization continues
Estonia and Ukraine to collaborate on digital ID development
Liquid Avatar brings biometric verification to metaverse with Aftermath Islands credential
European digital ID must have further security safeguards, Czech EU presidency says
Australian state contracts Unisys to deploy iris and face biometrics in prisons for $12.8M
A remote lie detector based on biometric signals has been developed
Researchers say they have devised a camera that can take pictures of target objects and nothing else in the frame
A pair of papers on why biometric systems are so often found to be less effective with some demographic groups and how to measure those disparities have been published by researchers from the Identity and Data Sciences Lab at the Maryland Test Facility
Citing the need for a workplace robot to know the humans working around it, researchers say gait recognition is the better option compared to face biometrics
Biometric smart locks used in internet of things deployments can be hacked through their wireless connectivity capabilities, according to a new paper
Biometric industry events. And more!

Biometrics Market

The Biometric system market size is projected to grow from USD 36.6 billion in 2020 to USD 68.6 billion by 2025; it is estimated to grow at a CAGR of 13.4% during the forecast period. Increasing use of biometrics in consumer electronic devices for authentication and identification purposes, the growing need for surveillance and security with the heightened threat of terrorist attacks, and the surging adoption of biometric technology in automotive applications are the major factors propelling the growth of the biometric system market.

Biometric Research & Development

Latest Research:

American researchers probe where biometric bias comes in and how to measure it

A pair of papers on why biometric systems are so often found to be less effective with some demographic groups and how to measure those disparities have been published by researchers from the Identity and Data Sciences Lab at the Maryland Test Facility.

John Howard of MdTF, which is used for DHS’ biometrics tests, pointed out the papers in a LinkedIn post.

John Howard, Ph.D. on LinkedIn: #publications #FaceRecognition #bias

Two new #publications from our lab this week -- both deal with extremely important topics in the #FaceRecognition…

www.linkedin.com

‘Disparate impact in facial recognition stems from the broad homogeneity effect: A case study and method to resolve’ attributes the problem of biometric bias to “demographic clustering.” This is the phenomenon where the use of features determined (at least in part) by the gender or ethnicity of people increases similarity scores between individuals.

The paper shows that it is possible to remove feature patterns shared within demographic groups while keeping distinct features that can be used for facial recognition. The team used linear dimensionality techniques to increase the “fairness” of two ArcFace algorithms, as measured in four different ways, without lowering true match rates.

‘Evaluating proposed fairness models for face recognition algorithms’ considers the Fairness Discrepancy Rate (FDR) proposed by Idiap researchers and the Inequity Rate (IR) proposed by NIST researchers. Both metrics are found to be difficult to interpret due to inherent mathematical characteristics. The study authors, therefore, propose the Functional Fairness Measure Criteria (FFMC) to help with interpretations of the above metrics.

They also develop a new measure, the Gini Aggregation Rate for Biometric Equitability (GARBE). This measurement technique is based on the Gini coefficient, which is a statistical measure of dispersion typically used in measuring income inequality.

The work on an evaluation method is intended to directly support ISO 19795–10, which sets an international standard for bias in facial recognition.

Both papers appeared in the publication of the 26th International Conference on Pattern Recognition (ICPR 2022) Fairness in Biometrics Workshop.

Programmer builds a better lie detector with computer vision and facial analysis

A remote lie detector based on biometric signals has been developed by Fletcher Heisler, host of the ‘Everything is Hacked’ YouTube channel. The Truthsayer software uses standard video feeds to analyze changes in the expression of subjects to find indications that they are not telling the truth.

Hackaday covered the software and a highly engaging presentation Heisler delivered on it at DEF CON 30, which has been posted to YouTube.

Heisler drew attention in the computer vision community earlier this year when he created software for coding with facial expressions.

Heisler notes the limitations of polygraph tests. Their effectiveness is “controversial at best,” they cannot be performed remotely, and the subject always knows they are taking one.

He used OpenCV, a pre-trained mood recognition library, and Face mesh from Google’s MediaPipe to build Truthsayer in the Python programming language.

Detecting the face of the subject, particularly with footage including multiple people, was a temporary challenge in Truthsayer’s development, Heisler says.

Heart rate is measured from the rush of blood to and from the face as picked up by a standard webcam. Changes are measured, along with differences in blink rate, average gaze direction, lip compression, and occlusions of the face with the subject’s hand. Clusters of signals can indicate dishonesty.

“There’s a lot of pseudoscience here,” Heisler acknowledges, “but there’s a lot of really well-researched science.”

The result is a slide-bar with truth on the right, and considered as the baseline, and ‘deceit’ on the right.

U.S. Congressional testimony from Mark Zuckerberg showed no signs of deception, but Truthsayer identified moments in his testimony to the European Parliament where questions about shadow profiles prompted signs of deceit.

Potential uses of the software suggested by Heisler include social engineering, but also increase trust in negotiations and interviews or online dating, assisting therapy or guided meditation, and as an aid, for autistic people to understand the expressions of others.

Truthsayer Uses Facial Recognition To See If You're Telling The Truth

It's hard to watch [Mark Zuckerberg]'s 2018 Congressional testimony and not come to the conclusion that he is, at a…

hackaday.com

What private data? New camera only sees what it’s told to look for

Researchers say they have devised a camera that can take pictures of target objects and nothing else in the frame.

The concept could allay some privacy fears and make compromises between data privacy and law enforcement.

A large electrical and engineering team at the University of California, Los Angeles has taken the common pixelation of unwanted details in an image and gone one better in terms of privacy.

The example used in their paper is software told to record a handwritten 2 (or groups of 2s) but ignore all other handwritten numbers in a lens’ field of view.

The same principle theoretically could be used to find a face in a crowd but instantaneously block (as in before they are recognized and recorded) all other faces and objects in the frame.

The same should ultimately be true for any secret, unwanted, or otherwise private information, including other target biometric and significant biographical data in fields of extraneous information.

Unwanted data is not disguised at any point in the process of capturing the wanted information because it is not digitized in the first place.

Disguising the unwanted data as happens today requires some form of obscuring, which means it can be intercepted along the way or stolen once recorded.

What is more, despite there being commonalities between the numbers 2, 3 and 8, the machine-learning software looking for a 2 did not show the parts of the 3 and the 8 that are shared with the numeral 2. The other numbers, as a whole, were not digitized.

The new method could make the protection of privacy more energy efficient, too, according to scientists. Objects that are not digitized do not have to be processed.

UCLA has published a summary of the idea here.

Novel Privacy-Preserving Camera Captures Only Objects of Interest at Speed of Light

Over the past decade, digital cameras have become ubiquitous in nearly every aspect of modern living - embedded in…

samueli.ucla.edu

Gait recognition could be better than face biometrics to ID coboting workers

Citing the need for a workplace robot to know the humans working around it, researchers writing in the journal Scientific Reports say gait recognition is the better option compared to face biometrics.

Scientists at the University of León, in Spain, created an application called Brittany, a tortured acronym for Biometric Recognition Through Gait Analysis. Brittany identifies people using behavioral biometrics that analyze “the features of a specific action performed by a person.”

Biometric recognition through gait analysis - Scientific Reports

The use of people recognition techniques has become critical in some areas. For instance, social or assistive robots…

www.nature.com

Brittany, using a custom model and tested in a simulated home-care environment, was 88 percent accurate. A similar project was published by the university in 2019.

Using conventional cameras (capturing depth and color data) mounted on robotics for confirming someone’s identification means loading a lot of code and processing power into machinery typically designed to be more drone-like, more of an electronic commodity.

That or a robot has to be leashed physically or over wi-fi to a remote processor, sacrificing speed of work, according to a paper describing the innovation.

Facial recognition also means having to see at least a significant portion of a person’s face.

Brittany, loaded onto Robotnik’s Orbi-One mobile service robot for the research project, has a single two-dimension lidar to analyze gaits unobtrusively and in real-time.

Onboard, Brittany has a convolutional neural network-based tool devised at León University called People Tracking, or PeTra, which builds a map from data collected by lidar reflections. The movement represented on the map is compared to previously collected biometric information about cobot colleagues.

Researcher demonstrates biometric data theft from smart lock with droplock hack

Biometric smart locks used in internet of things deployments can be hacked through their wireless connectivity capabilities, according to a new paper from a researcher with James Cook University in Singapore.

‘IoT Droplocks: Wireless fingerprint theft using hacked smart locks’ has been accepted for publication in the 2022 IEEE International Conference on Internet of Things (iThings). The paper describes a proof-of-concept device built to connect to the smart lock through Wi-Fi. The attacker then checks for an exposed debug interface to edit the lock’s firmware to collect and upload fingerprint biometric data to the proof-of-concept device. If the interface is not exposed, the firmware can be accessed by running an exploit, according to the research.

If the attacker has physical access to the lock, it can be disassembled and wired into the attack device using its fingerprint chip debugging pads.

Many smart locks store biometric data on drives that are not encrypted and hardened like the secure enclaves used in smartphones and tablets. Further, the researcher started from the perspective of commercial-off-the-shelf biometric locks in many cases being built with cheap IoT components.

Because of this, an attacker with the receiving device within Bluetooth range could capture fingerprints from the device when it is used by an authorized user.

That biometric data could then be input into another authentication system in a presentation attack.

The attack is not scalable or particularly fast, taking approximately 27 seconds according to the paper, so it would be more effective against specific valued targets than as a means of stealing many people’s biometrics from different locks.

The researcher recommends disabling debug function in biometric smart locks, using PKI-signed firmware updates, reducing the portability of the fingerprint templates these locks collect, increasing user awareness. Perhaps most importantly, a standardized method for users to verify the origin and integrity of the device’s firmware could mitigate such an attack.

The popularity of biometric smart locks was demonstrated earlier this year by a Kickstarter campaign that blew past ten times its stated crowdfunding goal, largely by selling pre-orders of video smart locks.

Main News:

iPhone 14 Pro reframes Face ID array, new temperature sensor for Apple Watch 8

Apple unveiled its new iPhone 14 lineup at its ‘Far Out’ fall event on Wednesday, alongside all the features of its upcoming iOS 16, new Apple Watches, and the second generation of the AirPods Pro.

It was an event that made many Apple fans happy. However, the iPhone maker did not particularly innovate in terms of biometrics this time.

Defying last year’s predictions, the iPhone 14 lineup does not have under-display biometrics and does not support Touch ID. The devices eschew fingerprint sensors altogether. They do, however, support Face ID.

From a hardware perspective, the iPhone 14 Pro and iPhone 14 Pro Max feature an updated cutout for the front-facing cameras and Face ID sensors Apple called the ‘Dynamic Island.’

Beyond housing the devices’ face biometrics technology, the Dynamic Island area can display music notifications, timers, and sports scores.

However, perhaps the greatest innovation in biometrics from the latest Apple event is the Watch Series 8’s new temperature sensor. Apple said it can calculate ovulation estimation and provide better menstrual cycle tracking, alongside generally improved fever detection capabilities.

As for the second iteration of the AirPods Pro, they improve on their predecessor by enhancing sound quality and noise cancellation and offering longer battery life. Nothing biometric-related here either, but Apple may have a trick up its sleeve as far as these earphones are concerned.

Case in point, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) recently granted Apple a patent that shows a system capable of identifying AirPods users via inner ear biometrics.

The patent, spotted by Patently Apple, has number 11,438,683 and seems to suggest that if the biometrics do not match, the AirPods will not function.

From a technical standpoint, the technology seems to rely on a signature of the user’s ear created by an ultrasonic signal reflecting off the surface and generating an echo. The earphones may then acquire a response based on the resulting audio output.

According to the document, in some examples, the response is transmitted from the wireless headphone to another device (possibly an iPhone), suggesting the technology could also be used to unlock other devices.

It is yet unclear if the biometric technology will be implemented in AirPods Pro devices in the future.

Apple has Won a Patent that Reveals a possible future Security Feature for AirPods Pro that…

Today the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office officially granted Apple a patent that reveals that Apple is considering a…

www.patentlyapple.com

Winning.I accepted into South Korean government’s international expansion accelerator

Winning.I has been selected to participate in the global business expansion accelerator Born2Global to support the growth of its mobile contactless biometrics and customer authentication.

Born2Global (B2G) is operated by the South Korean government under the Ministry of Science and ICT. Winning.I was accepted after a 3-minute pitch as part of the Boot-X program, as one of seven teams admitted into the program.

B2G was established in 2013, and supports the expansion of 200 startups annually. The criteria for selection include receipt of significant investment from a third party and readiness for commercial overseas expansion, according to the announcement.

Winning.I says its technology for biometric authentication with the rear camera of a mobile device is patented, and is the first of its kind commercialized for the financial sector in Korea.

Dylan Park, Winning.I’s global business manager says the admission reflects the improvement of its products “that have been upgraded with main perspective of user-friendly, stability and security to lead the new generation biometrics solution in the market. Now we will more focus on our new product/service which is developing, [so] global users can safely use the biometric authentication service.”

The company also received recognition from Korea’s government for its contactless mobile fingerprint biometrics solution Aerox Finger v3.0 in July, setting up its B2G acceptance.

Anonybit biometric data vault, passwordless infrastructure gain two data security certification

Anonybit has completed a pair of data security certifications to show third-party industry validation for its enterprise-grade protections for biometrics and other data stored in the company’s system.

The certifications are for the SOC (Service Organization Control) 2 Type II standard, also known as SSAE 18, and International Organization for Standardization 27001:2013 information security management standard.

SOC 2 Type II sets a standard for the internal controls used by cloud service providers to safeguard customer data. ISO 27001:2013 is the standard for information security management and continual improvement.

Prescient Assurance conducted the audits for the two certifications.

Together, they provide trust that the requirements of data protection laws from the EU’s GDPR to California’s CCPA can be met by Anonybit. The company says more trust and transparency into service providers’ operations are necessary, particularly in light of the constant increase in data collected for verification and compliance purposes.

“Completing both SOC 2 and ISO27001 certifications reinforces Anonybit’s ongoing commitment to the security, availability, and processing integrity of the Anonybit platform,” says Frances Zelazny, co-founder and CEO of Anonybit. “In addition to our commitment to privacy, our customers can feel confident that we are making every investment to establish and maintain the highest level of security and compliance.”

Embedding digital identity in the Jyväskylä Smart City Project

Smart cities will be able to create their own interoperable digital identities for residents, thanks to approaches developed by cybersecurity services firm Nixu via a partnership with Ioxio, a digital services and solutions provider, the firms announced last month.

The first application of this collaboration manifested in a trusted data-sharing pilot in Jyväskylä, Finland, in June.

The project saw the deployment of Nixu’s identity access management software and Ioxio’s Dataspace service, enabling remote and secure access control to several digital services and physical locations in the city.

Biometric Update spoke to Lauri Tielinen, lead consultant in digital identity at Nixu, about the Jyväskylä Smart City Project.

“The pilot itself was limited in size and targeted at the existing [digital] users already living in the specific area [Kangas] where Jyväskylä pushes new digital solutions,” said Tielinen.

Because of this, within the scope of the pilot, Nixu did not need to create a brand-new solution for digital ID verification for Kangas residents.

“The project just used the existing Kangas service portal users, who wanted to join the pilot,” the digital ID expert says in an interview.

However, in the larger scheme of the smart city initiative, Tielinen says the project’s purpose is to create Jyväskylä-wide digital identities for both the digital and physical worlds.

“The exact ways for initial user verification for this digital ID are still open, but it is very likely that upcoming services, such as the ‘Sinuna‘ service currently being built in Finland, in addition to the already established Suomi.fi e-Identification service would be used.”

Tielinen explains that while Suomi relies mainly on bank accounts, Sinuna will have use cases for more specialized applications, including onboarding international students.

“The existing processes used by property managers and property service companies would be utilized for the physical key delivery. Within the pilot, we mostly used existing keys the pilot users had,” said Tielinen, explaining that all or most apartments in the Kangas area have smart locks.

According to Tielinen, the potential to use digital ID technologies in Jyväskylä, 270km north of Helsinki, is huge.

“Already in the current situation, the city has been very advanced in its digital offering. However, the identity and access management (IAM) solutions have typically been application-specific and not centralized.”

Tielinen further explains that, by building a centralized IAM solution, residents would be able to use both their physical and digital identities practically everywhere within the ecosystem.

“A crucial part of the pilot project has been concepting the commercial models around this; how different commercial services targeted at Jyväskylä residents could most feasibly utilize a centralized IAM platform.”

Further, the Nixu executive believes that in the future, Jyväskylä will eventually utilize a mobile phone-based application that citizens can use to prove who they are in addition to the actual (physical) smart keys.

“This idea is also something that is developed and concepted in the EU in different digital ID projects,” Tielinen explains.
“The purpose of the centralized IAM platform is to tie services, platforms, and the digital and physical worlds together. Ioxio Dataspace also fills an important role by providing standardized data sets for all the services and applications within the ecosystem, streamlining integration efforts.”

NIST listening to AI community on a proposed risk management framework

The U.S. government wants everyone to do better at incorporating trust into their AI products’ design, development, use and evaluation. Ignoring trustworthiness has caused major problems for some.

In fact, the National Institute of Standards and Technology has published a second draft of its AI Risk Management Framework, and wants input on what its staff has created.

NIST wants to create a voluntary and collaborative document that is accepted within the AI community as realistic but still aspirational. In no small measure, NIST realizes that AI will remain an esoteric or even alien concept with most people unless it is perceived as transparent and standards-based.

Comments on the framework can be sent to AIframework@nist.gov by September 29. A workshop referencing the feedback is scheduled October 18–19.

There is a framework playbook, too, and it is still a draft as well.

NIST is hoping for more than comments. It would like to hear from the community about resources including explanatory papers, approaches to measurement and evaluation, toolkits and policies.

The organization is also looking for candidates to write The History of AI in the United States, Part I.

Officials at NIST want to see a show of hands of research contractors capable of painting a detailed picture of domestic development of artificial intelligence.

No contracts necessarily will result from this search for sources and NIST is a legislatively mandated intermediary in this instance for the National Artificial Intelligence Advisory Committee.

If a contract is ordered, NIST would be looking for reports on “topical areas of concern,” and technical and analytical support for the committee.

Among the 13 areas that the contractor would delve into include: How competitive is the country in AI, what is the state of AI science and how close is artificial general intelligence, is the committee helping to maintain the U.S.’ position and are federal laws adequately addressing ethical and safety issues?

Digital identity verification spending to pass $20B by 2027

Businesses around the world are spending $11.6 billion on digital identity verification this year, and that amount will nearly double to $20.8 billion in five years, according to the latest forecast from Juniper Research.

The report examines the market verticals where digital identity verification is used, and key vendors, and breaks down its market forecast into eight regions. Spending is divided into banking, government services, ecommerce and other services.

Juniper has also published a white paper on ‘Why Verifying Digital Identity is Critical.’ The seven-page paper starts with the basics, reviewing the remote transactions, fraud, and requirements for know your customer and anti-money laundering checks that are imposed by regulators. Challenges identified are dealing with synthetic identities and balancing customer friction and security.

Why Verifying Digital Identity Is Critical

Our complimentary whitepaper, Why Verifying Digital Identity Is Critical, examines key trends driving digital identity…

www.juniperresearch.com

“There are multiple pathways to identity verification success,” says Damla Sat, co-author of the report. “There are many different segments and verification types, with no single vendor covering all the solutions. As such, there is still a lot of room for innovation; vendors must focus on building out innovation partnerships and acquisitions that allow them to intelligently orchestrate the most effective verification types for each use case to drive growth forward.”

Despite the rapid adoption of digital identity verification, even relatively sophisticated means of biometric online ID verification can be prone to spoof attacks.

SiLC doubles its lidar range, could make face biometric matches farther away

A vision sensor startup claims its silicon photonics can see, identify and avoid objects more than a kilometer in distance, doubling the detection range shown last spring.

SiLC Technologies executives say its reach cannot be matched by anyone in the industry. Security firms as well as manufacturers, vehicle-automation firms and those in metrology are likely buyers of such long-range detection products.

The California company makes the Eyeonic frequency-modulated, continuous-wave vision lidar transceiver operating at the 1550 nanometer wavelength, which is acceptable protection for eyes, according to U.S. government regulators and which can be delivered in high volumes, according to SiLC.

It debuted last December and has since been upgraded, company executives say.

SiLC has integrated a number of components onto a single chip, bringing down the cost and complexity of photonics subsystems. The Eyeonic sensor has millimeter-level precision at “long distances, according to executives, but has not detailed the claim.

Its systems boast three-dimensional face detection that when processed with facial recognition software can identify people at a distance. Based on the examples of image fidelity distributed to the media, it does not appear the company’s product can detect or match a face from a kilometer off.

Up close, 3D biometrics is a solid argument in buy decisions, as it captures more information when scanning faces. Devices might still be fooled by masks, but not by one-dimensional presentation attacks using physical pictures or images displayed on mobile devices.

Aratek launches multimodal biometric software platform for access management, HR tracking

Taiwan-based security company Aratek has released a new multimodal biometric system for access management applications with face and finger recognition capabilities and RFID card support.

Called TruFace, the solution is specifically designed to act as both an access control and an attendance management system.

“The big benefit of Aratek TruFace solution is that it maximizes physical security of your buildings while increasing workforce efficiency, all in a single do-all system,” explains Samuel Wu, VP of Aratek’s International Business Division.

From a technical standpoint, the TruFace solution integrates facial recognition hardware like the Aratek BA8200, BA8200-T and BA8300 terminals with the proprietary TruFace management software.

The combination of the technologies enables user enrollment and management, access control rules, body temperature detection, mask detection and visitor management, among other features.

It also allows system administrators to set access levels according to respective work schedules and to configure integrated physical access control systems remotely, either for a single facility or a multi-site system.

Further, the mobile app for Android and iOS supports remote control functions and allows employees to remotely manage their attendance with punch-in/out support, applying for leave, and generating attendance reports.

Humanode Public Sale dates update

Humanode, a decentralized private biometrically encrypted consensus mechanism and monetary system, announced the public sale details.

Wave 1 — For Validators and Researchers: September 20th, 2022
Wave 2 — For Broader Community and Friends: September 27th, 2022
Wave 3 — Public: October 4th, 2022

Note: Only the sale dates are changed, the other details about public sale remain the same. All waves will be held on Tokensoft. As a friendly reminder, please make sure you pass the KYC on Tokensoft. If you haven’t, click here.

Humanode is the first crypto-biometric network where One human = One node brings Sybil resistance, proper per human distribution of power and innovative governance models to the crypto industry using biometric technology. Already joined by 10K+ unique human validators. Besides the new type of Sybil-resistance, the direct biometric API allows NFT projects, DAOs, GameFi, metaverse, and other Dapps to integrate and enable private, decentralized biometric authentication.

Funding available for Finland’s self-sovereign digital ID ecosystem pilot project

Finnish start-up Findynet Cooperative has received a grant from the Ministry of Finance to the tune of €3 million (US$2.9 million) to carry out a pilot aimed at building a self-sovereign digital ID ecosystem as part of efforts by the country to advance its digital transformation ambitions.

The objective is to put in place a common and secure digital ID network that will give Finnish citizens more power over how they share and manage their personal data while carrying out digital transactions, according to a press release.

Once the system is in place, users will be able to share a variety of documents including certificates, digital receipts, other important files and identity credentials, in a trustworthy and data-secure manner.

The network will also allow for interoperability and seamless functioning of digital wallets developed by other digital ID service providers for individual users and business organizations, the release notes.

Findynet is a cooperative venture of nine public and private sector organizations, including Tietoevry, Nixu and Finnish Post.