Importance of ID-Proofing and Authentication in This “New Normal” Era.

Today most organizations rely on very old and tired forms of authentication for system access. The combination of username, password, and sometimes a second factor do not prove to you who is at the other end of a digital connection. We at 1Kosmos like to call this “hope based authentication”. You HOPE the user can remember their username and password. You HOPE that a bad guy is not able to capture the credentials or use phishing to social engineer passwords and tokens. And most importantly, you HOPE that the person typing the password in is who it is supposed to be.

To mitigate this risk, governments have established guidelines that allow a true remote digital identity to be established. In the USA, the standard is called NIST 800-63-3 and in Europe, it is called eIDAS.

The guidelines cover identity proofing and authentication of users (such as employees, contractors, or private individuals) interacting with IT systems over open networks. This is really a unique concept today. We have never really had identity at the other end of the line. Once you put identity into the hand of the user, you can rely on this instead of hope for system access.

Now that more and more people are working from home and accessing digital services, it is imperative that we rely more on identity – for the benefit of all parties involved.

The BlockID platform has identity at the heart of everything it does. Let’s make our world more secure – let’s use Identity. Remember, hope is not an authentication strategy.

(Mike Engle is 1Kosmos’ Chief Strategy Officer. You can contact him directly by email)

Learn more by listening to the audio blog below:

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