We need trust more than ever before..

In the old times..

Many of us have struggled at work with trust issues already in the pre-Internet time. It still continues.. 

Has the person we deal with the power to act on behalf of his or her organization? Is the signature in a letter or an agreement real? Has the organization the licenses needed? Is a statement issued by a third party genuine? Can financial data presented be trusted? How can a person be identified in remote services? Needless to say, that this – already then - caused risks, delays, manual work, costs and losses - altogether enormous friction in the economy 

Net-ID was born in 1992

Back in the early 90s we - at Union Bank of Finland (now Nordea) - were approached by the insurance sector needing a solution for identifying their customers in e-services. The idea was that our e-banking customer after logging in with customer number and one-time-code could continue through a secure “backdoor” to the insurance company.  This became the beginning of BankID – now the way to get identification credentials on the net in all Nordic countries. So the sore problem of missing identification tools in net services was solved already before Internet. 

This became also the way to e-sign documents in the late 90s.  All is naturally rooted in thorough checking government issued  identification documents before opening bank accounts and getting the e-banking code lists. Without capping liabilities it would have become far to expensive - not happened. 

Privacy protecting ID was not needed then

We did discuss if there should also be a second backdoor – providing a privacy protecting alias - when there is only a need to prove that you exist, your age, student-status, nationality, municipality etc. But not much needed then..

With Internet we need the trust infrastructure more than ever before

• Internet was built without a way to know who and what you are connecting to (Kim Cameron 2005) 
• Cybercrime damages 6 trillion USD/year
• Trust is plummeting globally
• Increased investment has not been reversing the trend
• Risk and compliance cost continue to rise
• Trust infra yields at least 10% revenue growth (GAN/Ayra)
• Geopolitical tensions on the rise and cybersabotage already experienced
• AI is accelerated the trend:
• - Verifying sources of data becomes more difficult
• - AI cannot forge verified credentials 
• - Identity building verified credentials in organization and citizen wallets needed as dashboards for deploying, empowering and steering AI-agents 
• - Identity wallets for all parties – also operators and things in AI will lower risks, increase productivity, speed up AI-uptake and lower the need for regulation