I took part in a Mobile Ecosystem Forum webinar with Iain McCallum of MEF, Julian Ranger, CEO of digime, and Judah Levine, CEO of HIP Consult & Mondato.
The essay question we were asked to tackle was: “How can the Identity & Access Management Industry help accelerate the evolution of an internet identity layer fit for the 21st century?”
The concept of an internet identity ‘layer’ will sound a bit odd to those outside the telecoms industry, but it’s a nice way to explain the problem we have right now with digital ID.
In a nutshell: the Internet as it was originally architected failed to include a layer dealing with personal identity. Services offered over the web have therefore had to fend for themselves in validating and authenticating user identities. And from cybercrime to bots, just look at how that worked out.
The trouble is, developing a new identity layer is not in the gift of the engineers who designed the Internet stack. The rollout of IPv6 might help a bit with some things, but fundamentally the digital identity challenge is probably more human and social than it is technological.
Thanks to Mobile Ecosystem Forum for hosting me. You can watch our webinar below, and Iain’s article summarising the discussion is here.
Jessica Figueras 