Trust is not just technical, and it’s not just derived from a process or an organisation. The need for Trust is also variable based on the risk involved in a transaction or the risk appetite of the service provider. Sometimes trust is almost irrelevant. Digital doesn’t make things any easier as we often have multiple parties involved in the communication of trust from issuer to holder of credentials, and on to a relying service not to mention requirements for onboarding, verification, issuance, and authentication to name but a few along the way.
Emerging standards and relentless innovation make many things better, but they also introduce challenges when we want multiple systems to work together and for trust to be largely independent of the underlying technical stacks.
To make Trust work in diverse ecosystems we need clear rules of engagement that champion the needs of all participants and clearly define their responsibilities to one another, and to the wider legal and business ecosystems they ultimately interact with. Efforts in multiple jurisdictions in both the public and private sector are developing these rule sets right now – this is what we can learn from the rise of the Trust Framework.