My vision for the future of digital identity
Intercede is built around a vision that we can make the world a safer, more secure place. That within a short period of time everyone on the planet will probably have to have at least one digital identity to go about their business, whether that’s employment, banking or crossing borders. Essentially, usernames and passwords, looking at what’s happened recently with eBay and the like, are very quickly becoming discredited as a security tool and are increasingly frustrating and inconvenient for consumers.
Digital identity, maybe combined with biometrics, is probably what’s going to replace that. In the past it’s been on specialized form factors like smart cards, which have been expensive and complex to distribute. I think smartphones change all that at a stroke. I think this is going to be how you, in effect, put an ATM in your pocket. So instead of having long complex passwords you’ll be able to have an ATM experience on your phone; a simple four digit PIN and biometrics that will get you into buildings and onto the network, and will also decrypt and sign all your transactions.
This rolls straight into the Internet of Things. And it’s not just that you and I need to establish trust between us. What if I’m driving a car that’s got lots of ECUs in it? All those IP connected devices in a car, in a plane, need to trust each other. If you put the car in a city environment with autonomous traffic control, the cars have to trust each other and they have to trust the network. That’s connected to the power grid, which takes you into smart grid and into the home. It takes you into medical components and wearable technology, like the next generation of wearable tech that Samsung and Apple have just announced based around healthcare.
It follows that electronic identities to maintain privacy are going to be absolutely critical. If those identities are going to be worth anything, and if the human experience is going to be worth anything, they have to be issued and managed throughout their lifecycle in a secure fashion. That’s the software that Intercede’s all about; we’re world leaders. So we think there’s a really exciting future for us as a company but also for consumers, because electronic identities really are going to make your life easier on both a personal and professional basis.
