Digital World Faces Potential Threat of Digital Identity

The world is going digital and those who haven’t yet, are seeking their ways to onboard the ongoing trend. With the emergence of the digital world’s concept companies, institutions and individuals started looking for opportunities to leverage the new age technology. New tech brings unprecedented issues with them though.

The digital world also has such issues which acts as hurdles for the tech to become trustworthy and widely acceptable. One such issue is with digital identity and its flawed system. Given the popularity and normalization of the tech, people are gushing into the space, However, the security measures specifically related to digital identity are not feasible enough.

Senior Vice President at an identification solution provider firm Callsign, Bill Sytsma puts his point of view over the subject—raising the potential issue and offering possible solutions for companies to resolve them. Apparently the trust within the digital world, often termed as “digital trust” needs a security system that does not fail a user.

In contrast, a broken digital identity system lets frauds and scams happen at large scale resulting in decreasing trust of people within the system. It becomes crucial for companies and institutions to avail top notch security and safety.

By the time the world chose to transition to digital space, the safety measures lagged behind and were unable to move at the similar pace. In the physical world,the identification becomes possible through facial recognition through hundreds of facial expressions, voice, behavior etc. While in digital space pins and passwords and facial biometrics, etc are available to ensure authentication. However, the latter lacks accuracy in comparison to the former.

For instance, using the scams through social engineering tactics, hacking or malware, etc, it is possible for bad actors to access personal information for digital identification. Also, the darkweb also facilitates the offering of pins and passwords of various accounts and bids for them according to holdings and sensitive information, etc.

Dependency on such a system full of incompetencies and inability to counter the threat leads to more sevre digital atacks. This includes breaching of digital information, ransomware attacks, falling of customers for fishing, etc. Such instances lead to breach of digital trust among users.

Although companies take steps to eliminate the risks while employing multiple security layers in the form of increasing complexities within online scams. One time passwords (OTPs) could be one such example ensuring the verification. However, this leads to another issue for users which is adding friction and the process becoming lengthy and tiring.

Sytsma suggests more sophisticated tools to use for authentication instead of mere passwords. One such tool could be behavioral biometrics which tracks customer behavior—the way of swiping over the phone, typing on keyboard, sliding the mouse or touchpad, etc. Since these traits are not possible for scammers to copy and apply.

The method is way smooth and frictionless in comparison to passwords and OTPs since it does not ask for putting extra effort. Systems would need to keep track of customer’s activity while putting in the information using the systems. Also this method would not pose any threat to privacy or other personal information.

Andrew is a blockchain developer who developed his interest in cryptocurrencies while his post-graduation. He is a keen observer of details and shares his passion for writing along with being a developer. His backend knowledge about blockchain helps him give a unique perspective to his writing