Hyperledger Forum Recap – Identity Proofing, and Passwordless User-friendly Digital Identity

IdRamp presented with Oracle at Hyperledger Global Forum June 2021. The event focused on enterprise use of blockchain technologies using the 15 projects that fall under the Hyperledger “greenhouse”. Keynotes and speakers shared their insights on the current state of enterprise blockchain adoption across several hot topics including central bank digital currencies (CBDCs), non fungible tokens (NFTs), and most importantly– identity. 

IdRamp CEO, Mike Vesey presented with Mark Rakhmilevich, Senior Director, Blockchain Product Management at Oracle. In their session, titled “Identity Proofing Solution Combining HL Indy and Fabric”, Mike and Mark presented the benefits and ease of integrating an identity proofing solution based on Hyperledger Indy, Hyperledger Fabric, while leveraging the Oracle blockchain and how  using two separate distributed ledgers makes the solution stronger. 

A few key points they discussed:

• Adding verifiable credentials to proven identities transforms existing identity processes as we know, protecting the privacy of the user.
• A properly implemented privacy-preserving system also has the byproduct of creating a secure and easy to use identity, something that is lacking in many existing systems today.
• A tight identity proofing system can eliminate bad actors, reduce fraud and really strengthen the customer experience.
• This is a repeatable process that customers, employers and other end users can go through to gain access to different services and that it actually provides a much better customer experience by taking out a lot of the complexity of usernames passwords across different interfaces for different systems.

When asked by a session attendee about the types of verification, Mike described how the system can scale in multiple verticals, “The framework that we showed here is very flexible and so it can easily be adopted to leverage whatever additional back-end verification might be necessary depending on where you’re creating the identity right if you are in opening a bank account if you are going to getting a library card, there’s all kinds of different requirements and each organization can decide the level of verification necessary and then plug in those mechanisms.”

They concluded the presentation with a demonstration, highlighting the Hyperledger Fabric piece of the solution that leverages the Oracle blockchain platform, which is Fabric based. Using the context of the public sector, they showed how a government can affect multiple services by using consistent identity and processes. A key requirement for agencies and departments in the public sector is the ability to authenticate users against a single set of credentials for multiple applications. They don’t want to have the users having to set up identities for each application separately in its own silo. There needs to be an environment where a single set of credentials can be used across multiple applications. The demo showed how this type of decentralized identity system can be deployed using existing investments and can help downstream systems gather information and make better decisions.

Mike went on to say, “The really important takeaway from the presentation and the demonstration here is how the mix of technologies to form a really simple solution, right for the services it’s very easy to integrate and build this uh build this dynamic verification system. And we’re providing some significant benefit to the end user by making it simpler and easier for them to interact. So the the this you know what really makes the project special and the solution special is that we’re not trying to fix everything with a single tool, we’re using the best best of class solutions, as Mark indicated earlier, to really provide the best experience for both the data integrity security as well as the user friction the user experience to make that you know to make that solution.”

view the slides from this session 

IdRamp delivers tools and services  to enterprise identity with a zero trust approach. The IdRamp platform transforms how business is done. Bridging legacy corporate Identity and Access Management technology with flexible and easy to use distributed ledger technology, companies and governments can change the way they interact with their customers and employees

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