Welcome. I'm here to talk with Joni Brennan of DIACC (Digital ID & Authentication Council of Canada), about what she feels is the sort of the next big thing to happen, the big innovations around digital identity that is impacting the business, the digital business, and maybe beyond. Joni, welcome.
Thank you so much for having me, Martin.
So maybe give a bit of a background around your person and DIACC.
Yeah. So, I've been working in identity management, nonprofit standards and innovation, for more than 20 years, going back to the days of SAML, and global risk management. And, for the last nearly ten years, I've been working at DIACC, which is an organization that's based in Canada and focused on digital identity, that has privacy and security that works in the global digital economy. So global interoperability with broadly available economic benefits is what our focus is on.
Okay. And what is it what you currently see as the big thing, the big change happening?
Yeah, for sure, there's... we always have changes within our ecosystem. And I think we've seen more than one standard trend come, well, we’ve seen more than one standard come and go. And in fact the standards don't go.
So, I think what we do see is the evolution. And I would say, of course, the big evolution now is around decentralized identity. And so this is something important for our space. I think even more recently and something that you spoke about at the beginning of the conference, is that we have a lot of different puzzle pieces. And some of the discussions that I've heard at the conference this week is really to recognize that there will be more than one standard and there will be more than one approach. And so it will be I think, it's kind of a new maturity around recognizing, embracing this evolution and embracing the multiple standards that exist in the ecosystem. And there will be new ones to come. And really extending what decentralized has to offer, building on the foundations of them.
But at the end, it will be about interoperability. So I think this will be the key thing that will make everything interoperable. Yes. And I think this is also what I feel, that we are currently in a phase where we have sort of this idea, which is around for quite a while, with different terms like self-sovereign identity, decentralized identity, etc., maturing.
Yeah.
But what I feel specifically at our conference now, at EIC, is that we are currently... in a lot of talks we have this concept, we have a lot of standards which have evolved, and they have right now hitting the real world use cases. And there's a lot of things popping up where we say, okay, we need this as well. We need that as well. Like we talked today about revocation and about having the same credentials and multiple wallets and a lot of other things, and I believe that there's still a lot to do. On the other hand, I'm absolutely with you that I feel that this is something which will change the way we do a lot of things in business. We had a lot of interesting talks about how it may impact consent management, etc.. So I think really, I would fully agree this is the next big thing. It will not be the one standard. So we need interoperability.
Yeah. I agree with all of this. And really to make sure to remember interoperability from a technical perspective and interoperability from the assurance and trust perspective. And so some sometimes this is solved with PKI and cryptography, and then there are auth technology processes that happen as well. And making sure that the data that comes into the credentials or into the systems are that we have common assurance and that from one ecosystem into another ecosystem, that we're not introducing risk from, you know, between ecosystems. So I think it's really that, technical business and all of the practices and how these come together. And the other piece here, too, I think it's been, very interesting around the... of course, there's a lot of attention on digital wallets. And recognizing that the issuer, holder, verifier model, it's really the issuer issuing the credential to the holder. And so the wallet is an instantiation. And there can be other instantiations. So I think that's also a sign of maturity because sometimes we, even myself want to just think issuing into the wallet. But really the holder is the really central part.
And then I think in the panel today, we have discussed also the assurance part and the trust part and I feel that we probably better think about provenance. I try to use the term. Because, I think that the art will be to enable the verifier to understand to which degree the verifier can, so to speak, trust a certain credential, does it fit to what the verifier needs. And, so this is also a bit more about enablement. I think this is... there's so much going on, both at this conference and in the entire industry about this. But I think the discussions also show that we are ready to right now, think about how to make it work in the real world.
Yeah, and I love that you had the comment on provenance. In the recent, you know, in the recent year and the recent months, I've been spending a lot of time on provenance and traceability. Now, all of this balanced with personal data control and privacy. And so even for, even on the personal data level, I want to know traceability of data that I've shared. I want to know traceability of data that's come to me. And so provenance, and I'm also using quite often the word authenticity, authentic, you know, and so this is of undisputed origin. So of provenance and authenticity and traceability. I think these are all functions of, you know, this ecosystem that we're working on together and with the professionals and businesses and governments and organizations that are prioritizing user centricity, personal data control, privacy within the design, ethical design. So, this is a complicated subject. And to see so many people here and organizations committed, is very inspiring.
Yeah. And it's a big thing. You know, Jörg, my co-founder of KuppingerCole Analysts and the one who, runs the agenda for the EIC, he just posted on the panel we had in the morning, there were people representing more than 2 billion people from India, from the US, from the EU, all talking about how to make this work. And this again, goes into interoperability. So I'm fully with you, I think decentralized identity is really the next big thing. There's still some work to do. Yeah. Go ahead.
You and you also. if we didn't share that we've been talking about the implications of AI both positive and negative. Yeah. And the ability to create deepfake, shallow fakes, live fakes. this layer of verification of provenance and authenticity is going to be even so much more important as AI comes forward.
Absolutely. So Joni, thank you very much for sharing your thoughts about where identity is heading. Very insightful as usual. Thank you for taking the time. And thank you to everyone for listening to us.
Thanks for having me, Martin, and thanks for always being, a place where identity professionals can gather from around the world and move the agenda forward.
Thank you. Welcome.
