The SSI Orbit Podcast – Self-Sovereign Identity, Decentralization and Digital Trust

Dan Gisolfi is currently leading the delivery of innovation capabilities across Discover Financial Services (DFS), such as Hack-aaS, Patent Program, Design Thinking Services, and an Innovation Accelerator. Prior to joining DFS, he led an innovation team focused on the incubation of IBM Security’s Zero Trust Architecture in collaboration with internal labs, academic institutions and NIST. About Podcast Episode Some of the key topics covered during this episode with Dan are: How does the chicken and egg problem relate to digital identity? Is there a dependency on Government IDs to seed the marketplace? Are unique identifier databases required to become a credential issuer? What is transitive trust? And how does it differ from how trust gets established otherwise (e.g., through backend API calls)? The missing role in the trust triangle: The Examiner. Can Examiners become digital notaries? Rethinking authentication and authorization - using attestations from multiple issuers helps to create more trust. How Issuance can become a business model for many trusted service providers. Some challenges with the mDL (ISO/IEC 18013) standard. The benefits of using a Microcredentials approach. Misconceptions about becoming credential issuers (e.g., assuming liability, data minimization). Where to find Dan? LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/vinomaster/ Blogs: https://www.ibm.com/blogs/blockchain/author/dan-gisolfi/ Follow Mathieu Glaude Twitter: https://twitter.com/mathieu_glaude   LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mathieuglaude/ Website: https://northernblock.io/

Dominik Beron is the Founder & CEO of walt.id, a leading company in the field of decentralized identity. Mr. Beron is a serial entrepreneur with executive education from the Universities of Pennsylvania, Oxford and a law degree (JD equivalent) from the University of Vienna. He worked for law firms (M&A), served as a policy advisor to the Austrian Parliament and as consultant to the UN, the EU Commission and national governments. Dominik has received numerous awards such as “30 under 30” (by Forbes US) and was named a Global Shaper (World Economic Forum). About Podcast Episode The question of “What is Identity?” is a very complicated one. In this conversation, Dominik distinguishes SSI as being Who I am, whereas NFTs as being What I own. Identity is a complicated topic. If I own a Ferrari, it says something about my identity. This conversation contrasts NFTs and SSI, while talking about how they both are complementary in representing one’s Identity. Some of the key topics covered during this episode with Dominik are: What drove the 2021 hype cycle for NFTs? Has the hype around NFTs been good for digital identity? Ownership-based Access Management – using NFTs for Access Management What are Soulbound tokens, and what are some issues associated with them? Why is building SSI products harder than building NFT products? What does it mean to be an EBSI conformant wallet? OIDC SIOP and the Open Policy Agent Does SSI fit within a Zero Trust model? Gaia-X – the EUs new cloud infrastructure How should we treat data replication and backups? What data do I really want to control? Where to find Dominik? LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dominikberon/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/DominikBeron Follow Mathieu Glaude Twitter: https://twitter.com/mathieu_glaude   LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mathieuglaude/ Website: https://northernblock.io/

Imraan Bashir is a Partner & National Canadian Public Sector Cyber Leader at KPMG. Imraan is a seasoned executive with 20+ years of experience advising on cyber security and information technology matters to a wide variety of public and private sector clients. Imraan is well-versed in multiple areas of cyber security, including governance, strategy, incident management, cloud security, risk management, digital identity and more.  Prior to joining KPMG, Imraan spent time in the public sector, where he directed the policy, strategy, implementation and oversight of Government of Canada enterprise-wide cyber initiatives, including leadership of key programs such as cloud security and digital identity. About Podcast Episode This conversation is meant to generate some suggestions on how to avoid the big brother rhetoric when it comes to digital ID programs. Some of the key topics covered during this episode with Imraan are: The rise of Misinformation How to “pre-bunking” certain ideas? Misconceptions on Zero Trust What is Canada doing better/worse in digital ID related to other national programs? How can digital ID go wrong? Biometrics and facial recognition Centralization and selling of data to private sector How can we as an industry do a better job at educating the general population about digital ID? Where to find Imraan? LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/imraanbashir/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/iBashX Follow Mathieu Glaude Twitter: https://twitter.com/mathieu_glaude   LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mathieuglaude/ Website: https://northernblock.io/

Karla McKenna is an international standards specialist in the area of financial services. Ms. McKenna is the Head of Standards for the Global Legal Entity Identifier Foundation (GLEIF) for which she is responsible for facilitating the development and implementation of GLEIF standards and leveraging international standards from organizations such as the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) to maximize data quality and the operational integrity of the Global LEI System. Ms. McKenna also is Managing Director, GLEIF Americas. About Episode Some of the key topics covered during this episode with Karla are: What is the State of Legal Entity Verification today? What is a Legal Entity Identifier (LEI)? What is a Verifiable LEI (vLEI)? Should Governments be involved in the issuance of LEIs? Who can issue LEIs? Can Issuers monetize the issuance of LEIs? How are Relationships established between Legal Entities and Natural Persons? How GLEIF is establishing itself as a Root of Trust for Digital Trust Ecosystems. How to Chain Credentials and enable dependencies to be set between credentials within a value chain. Can vLEIs work with the Aries/Indy stack? What are some current Use Cases for vLEIs? GLEIF’s Roadmap. Read more about episode here: https://northernblock.io/gleif-standardizing-legal-entity-verification-with-karla-mckenna/ Where to find Karla? LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/karla-mckenna-81051310/ Website: https://www.gleif.org/ Follow Mathieu Glaude Twitter: https://twitter.com/mathieu_glaude   LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mathieuglaude/ Website: https://northernblock.io/

Joachim Lohkamp is the Founder & CEO of Jolocom, a Berlin-based company building decentralized digital identity and access right management solutions aimed to be universal, lightweight and based on open source protocols. One of the desired outcomes of using standards-driven open source code projects is to avoid vendor lock-in. If your digital identity is a public good, then you shouldn’t be locked in to one specific company. If a company goes out of business, I may lose my identity data. If I find a better alternative, I'm unable to port my identity. Therefore, interoperability is a vital aspect of being able to provide sovereignty to individuals but also to governments. Some of the key questions answered during this episode with Joachim are: What are the different lenses of Interoperability outside of simply technological ones? What is happening inside the EU's digital identity governance frameworks? How to go about preventing vendor/network lock-ins from the wallet perspective? Does ID proofing impact the ability to achieve permissionless SSI models? What is exciting about the intersection of SSI and web3, and are innovations in this area moving quicker than other areas? Despite the misuse of NFTs for identity-related use cases, are they still helping advance decentralized identity thinking? What learnings can SSI wallet providers gain from crypto wallet providers (e.g., security, key management, UX)? Will intelligent agent providers need to make their algorithms open sourced? Where do portable digital identities fit within the existent and ever changing digital identity landscape (e.g., e-sign, biometrics, IAM, etc.)? And more! Where to find Joachim? LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/joachimlohkamp/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/JoachimLohkamp Follow Mathieu Glaude Twitter: https://twitter.com/mathieu_glaude   LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mathieuglaude/

Eugenio (Gene) is an industry go-to person in the fight against proceeds of crime, corruption and terrorism (AML/ATF/ABC) within the investments, banking and insurance industries. Laws against money laundering were created to use against organized crime during the period of Prohibition in the United States during the 1930s. Organized crime received a major boost from Prohibition and a large source of new funds that were obtained from illegal sales of alcohol. The successful prosecution of Al Capone on tax evasion brought in a new emphasis by the state and law enforcement agencies to track and confiscate money, but existing laws against tax evasion could not be used once gangsters started paying their taxes. “Always follow the money” has been sound advice in law enforcement and political circles for decades. Nevertheless, tracking the flows of illicit funds generated by drug trafficking and organized crime and analyzing the magnitude and the extent to which these are laundered through the world’s financial systems remain daunting tasks. Can Digital ID come to the rescue? This episode covers the intersections of Digital ID, AML and Open Banking. Some of the key questions answered are: What’s the global impact of money laundering today? How can Digital ID help prevent illicit financial flows? How can technology (e.g., device fingerprinting) make anti-money laundering and counter terrorist financing efforts faster, cheaper and more efficient? What is the Financial Action Task Force's (FATF) Digital ID guidance? How can you layer multiple sources of identity (outside of government sources) to enhance Identification Assurance? How can you prevent money laundering through stronger Legal Entity Identity verifications? Can open banking succeed without Digital Identity? Are open banking and digital identity the same thing? What are some of the key Open Banking standards bodies that are active today? Does Open Banking make money laundering easier or more difficult? And more! Where to find Eugenio? LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/eugeniodimira/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/GeneDiMira Follow Mathieu Glaude Twitter: https://twitter.com/mathieu_glaude   LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mathieuglaude/

Andy Best is the CEO of the Civic Digital Network (CDN), a non-profit organization working to create national data infrastructure. CDN’s mission is to give the public sector the tools to meet the challenges of the coming century. How do you enable responsible economic activity in the current digital era? What is the government's proper role to facilitate, regulate and legislate to create the maximum social and economic public and private good. During this conversation, we discuss: What are Intangible Assets, the Intangible Economy - and why leaders should care about them? How do you approach Policy around Public Data Institutions, without making them too restrictive which can have negative impacts on private sector innovation? Why Policy Makers must look at Intangible Assets (such as software and data) very differently than Tangible Assets (roads and bridges). How to ensure the Right Controls are put in place for Public Data Utility programs? Why taking a Use Case Lens in the deployment of Public Infrastructure programs is the only approach. How Municipalities who adopt the right public data programs can increase the prosperity of their citizens. Why Government should view Standards as part of their Regulatory Frameworks. And more! Note that although this conversation is mostly framed around Canadian context, the key fundamental frameworks discussed are applicable across various democratic systems. Where to find Andy? LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/andy-best-82bab930/ Website: https://www.civicdigital.ca/ Follow Mathieu Glaude Twitter: https://twitter.com/mathieu_glaude   LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mathieuglaude/

Antti Kettunen is a digital identity and digital trust expert and advisor. He designs ecosystem solutions, actively participates in standards and industry groups (e.g. CEN, Trust over IP, Mobey), and helps customers deliver value in their digital identity projects. He also writes and speaks about digital identity and the ongoing paradigm shift in his blog Identifinity. Antti is also one of the co-founders and advocates of the FindyNet cooperative, a digital identity network for Finland. About Episode During this conversation, we discuss: The current digital landscape in the Nordics, the maturity of e-Government and digital registries, and the trust that citizens of these countries have towards their governments. How does the private sector in the Nordics look at self-sovereign identity? Where do they see the benefits? How do they look at the onramp from their existing federated authentication models? Knowing where my organization fits inside my value chain and why knowing this will help me understand how to both benefit, contribute and thrive within an ecosystem-centric system. How to decide whether or not to participate in the governance of an ecosystem? The problems with API-centered architectures and the benefits gained from adopting data-centric architectures. Why focusing too much on the Verifiable Credential Trust Triangle isn't sufficient as the only tool to help with the adoption of SSI ecosystems. An update on the EU Wallet and some thoughts on how it can spur SSI adoption, while looking at the risks of it possibly impeding private sector adoption. And more! For those interested, this is the book that Antti refers to during the conversation: https://www.amazon.com/Wide-Lens-Successful-Innovators-Others/dp/1591846293 Where to find Antti? Twitter: https://twitter.com/anttikettunen LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/anttikettunen Blog: https://identifinity.net/ Follow Mathieu Glaude Twitter: https://twitter.com/mathieu_glaude   LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mathieuglaude/

Stepan Gershuni is working towards making it easier for DAOs to onboard talent through Professional ID credentials. There is an oversupply of talent looking to join DAOs and Stepan is trying to help them manage their excess talent pools and onboard people faster.  About Episode During this conversation, we discuss: Where are the opportunities to apply SSI principles and frameworks towards DAOs? How do you decentralize hiring, education, and the coordination of work. Are .eth good or bad identifiers? Are .eth names and decentralized identifiers (DIDs) mutually exclusive? How can the decentralized discovery of professional skills happen? And more! About Guest Stepan Gershuni is the Lead Product Manager at Affinidi, Founder of Credentia and Deep Skills.  Twitter: https://twitter.com/sgershuni LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sgershuni/ Follow Mathieu Glaude Twitter: https://twitter.com/mathieu_glaude   LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mathieuglaude/

- Governance Orchestrators - The orchestrating required to bring together decentralized identity ecosystems is today's biggest gap for Commercial SSI. By this I mean the Trust over IP Level 4 governance authorities that are required to make something commercially real. We have the approaches, the principles, the technologies and the standards down. There is also clear market demand for data ownership and privacy-preserving digital interactions. We've have also seen great enhancements on mobile devices for authentication methods such as biometrics and continuous authentication. So the question is: how we make decentralized identity more of a reality in our day-to-day lives? How can we create a place in which a bank, a gig economy company or a start-up can all simply plug-in and begin using verifiable credentials? There is a glaring need for Commercial SSI Governance Authorities. As we know, half of the battle in decentralized identity, especially in government regulated industries, is governance. We require governance entities to help in the formation of ecosystems, the setting of rules, the making of markets, the monetization strategies, the dispute strategies, etc. More entities are required to manage the bits of a trust framework that are commercial decisions. About Episode During this conversation, we discuss: Charlie's learnings from the Trust over IP Foundation and the Good Health Pass Collaborative Thinking about the Governance of Decentralized Networks The opportunity for Vertical Market Makers Digital Smart Agents - the smart processing of wallets and storage Commercial SSI Governance Authorities About Guest Charlie has been a thought leader in the digital identity space for many years now, having spent time across organizations such as: SecureKey - helping secure key Canadian market customer and partner relationships, and key strategic partner engagements, and $21M Series C funding closed in December 2014. Idemia - driving the Government Identity Services cross division activities in the field of digital identity services. MasterCard - responsible for the strategy, definition, and rollout of a major new global business within MasterCard focused upon digital identity services – this the ID Service. Whilst at MasterCard he was a co-founder and on the steering board of both the Trust over IP Foundation and the Good Health Pass Collaborative. Now with Avast, Charlie is responsible for developing their identity services strategy as the company expands its expertise and innovation in privacy and identity products. You can find Charlie on LinkedIn here: https://www.linkedin.com/in/charleswalton2020/. Follow Mathieu Glaude Twitter: https://twitter.com/mathieu_glaude  LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mathieuglaude/