The key to trust in the digital world: digital identity

Digital identity is the key that opens the door to trust in the digital world, and we cannot lose control of it any more than we can give the key to a stranger.

A book called Our Trust: Why Sometimes is an article about trust written by Bruce Schneier, who, surprisingly, is not a sociologist but a top security expert. His idea is that social pressure is the source of trust.
He described a phenomenon in which people both want to benefit from betraying the group and want to Maintaining a good sense of self, this contradiction or delicate balance, comes from the constraints of social pressure.According to this, he put forward four different kinds of social pressure, namely, moral pressure, reputation pressure,institutional pressure and protection mechanism. The effects of these social pressures on different subjects are also different.

For example

For companies or individuals, moral pressure and reputation pressure are the most effective – the social responsibility advocated by companies in the 21st century; In the case of government, there are more people, and more scope, and the power of virtue and reputation Relatively small, so it needs to be constrained by rules and laws, for public power It is also necessary to “lock power into the cage of the system”, and institutional pressure plays a key role; Beyond that, there are protective mechanisms, whether it’s security doors in the physical world or various security technologies in the digital world, which are applied to groups of different sizes to generate trust.

Excellent interview with Carsten Ahrens, CEO of GAD Mobile Security

Do you think there are any opportunities for digital identity management?

We believe the opportunities are almost endless: basically, digital identity is the key to connecting the world with transparency and trust, and trust is the hard currency of the future. When hundreds of millions of people are connected to countless interconnected machines and devices, all of their identities, connections, transactions, data integrity, and privacy must be optimally managed and protected. Without confidence in the legitimacy of identity or transactions, or the protection and integrity of data, there is no sustainable business. There is no key point that can be clearly traced to the digital identity.

Can we fully implement secure digital identity?

Gene Spafford is quoted as saying, “The only truly secure system is a cut off system that is cast in a concrete block and sealed in a lead chamber with armed guards.”

In fact, the Jed SE is also highly safe. As far as I know, a GAD SIM card has never been hacked, and even the NSA had to steal encryption keys from the manufacturer to illegally access mobile communication networks, not from GAD. So we have a good understanding of what a security system is. I would say that we have achieved secure digital identity, and we are constantly improving.

so it is impossible to translate the pressure in reality to the network, and even the number Trust in the world is still in the wild stages of rebuilding and reinventing. The key to trust is identity.

Digital identity relies on the system to implement functions. In an identity system, there are generally three types of roles. Users, identity providers, and dependent parties. For example, when a person brings a reference letter to a recruitment office, he is a user. References come from a willingness to vouch for the user’s worthiness .

Brief summary

Generally speaking, trust in the digital world needs to be built based on digital identity. Digital identity is not only used as a unique identification for distinction, but more importantly for proof. Issuing certificates and verification certificates are two operations that can be decoupled, but the two are attributed to the increasingly centralized architecture of the Internet, which just puts the most important users aside, resulting in many identity silos. We know that trust can be passed on, just like your friend introduces you to a stranger, and you have a sense of trust in him. In the digital world, this is also feasible, and the autonomous identity based on blockchain is solving this problem.