I'm here with Sebastian Rohr of Umbrella Associates to talk about his perspectives on what is, so to speak, the most impactful evolution, change around digital identity that will really impact the way we do business, the digital business, the digital services organizations provide. Welcome, Sebastian.
Thanks for having me, Martin.
So maybe we start a bit with you explaining who you are, what you do. I think a lot of people know you, but I think most people associate you with heavy beer drinking.
That is actually true. I had one head hunter post under one of my posts, or comment on one of my posts that, how I am able to actually put a beer in any of my posts. So, during that other conference in the USA, I actually was asked, are you that identibeer guy? And yes, for all of our viewers here, #identibeer. That's sort of what we do, we hand out, bottles of beer that are serialized and numbered to, well, celebrities of the identity management space. And, of course, Martin also got his, Yeah, that is a reputation we call the Liquid Network.
Yes, exactly. I think the point is, networking. I think what you're doing is really helping, building and then maintaining the community, which is important.
Yes. So, yeah...
Aside of that. What is what you're doing as well.
Okay. So, in the daytime, I'm actually the Managing Director of Umbrella Associates. We are a boutique advisory in Germany, and well, we help our clients convert their business requirements into technical requirements and finding proper solutions for that. well, of course, leveraging all the great content that analysts like yourself and your colleagues produce. And then, putting that into action by selecting the right technologies to deploy.
Got it. So when you look at... you're in the identity space also for many decades. So what is it what what do you feel is the big thing?
I think in the last 2 or 3 years after the pandemic, we really feel that identity management became center stage. It is not the authentication log on password thing that was a nuisance. That was just a technical issue. People have come to realize that digital identity is really core and center and the foundation for everything that we do in the new modern business world. So all of the digital business processes cannot happen if there is not a trustworthy digital identity. Be it decentralized, be it in your own little silo. We're trying to break away from that, but it is really becoming more and more obvious to the business in general.
Yeah. And I think it becomes obvious almost every day. When you look at what Ticketmaster, 650 million records. So if your identity breaks in that sense, then you're in trouble as a business.
You are really in trouble in business and the organizations do feel that pain. So, yes, unfortunately for events like Ticketmaster, some haven't understood it yet. And then suddenly they have a bunch of shards instead of a nice little vase here, and then suddenly there's money and what could have been done better. And then they start thinking about it. Others are more forward thinking and established that, like we've seen so many good projects, especially around European identity wallets and standardization around that, where even governments now understand that without providing an interoperable structure, a network of such decentralized identities, their work serving their own people becomes harder and harder and needs to be reliable.
Yeah. And I think what I see in this field is that we need you to have three parties. So usually we think about three parties. I believe there are use cases which are more two-legged, instead of three-legged, there are use cases which are four-legged or so. But basically let's stick to this three-legged, an issuer of a verifiable credential, a holder with the wallet like me, and a verifier, so a party that accepts this. And I think this is also why I feel that, for instance, things like the initiatives of the EU around the digital identity wallet are so important. And also a lot of other initiatives we see on the other side of the pond are so important because what we need is, we need the critical mass in three areas. We need the critical mass in issuing. We need a critical mass in holding and then verifying.
It's a two sided market. And this is this is very important. I cannot just quite say, who this is attributed to, but to be successful in that whole space, you need to make sure that both the supply side and the consuming side are equally served by what you are doing. And I think especially here in Germany, we did really mess up. We created a great eID 15 years ago. And then, some of the authorities put a really huge barrier, in front. So to read that credential, you had to pay upfront 50,000 bucks. That was...
As a business.
As a business model.
I think for the individual, it only cost it a couple of euros, 40 or something to activate it. You know what? So I have my current ID card, I have it for, I think eight years now. I didn't activate it because back then there were really no... Well, and if I as an identity person don't use it, then there's obviously an issue.
So, there's one thing that happened last year which I'm really, really happy. Kristina Yasuda, who was often speaker here.
Right now, she is with SPRIN-D, The Federal Agency for Disruptive Innovation.
Yeah. And I wrote under that post that this actually increased my hope in this whole thing of eIDAS and the wallets in Europe actually having an impact and actually being a success, because I'm pretty sure that the way we did it in the last two decades, we would have messed it up again. So yeah, high hopes on you.
Yeah, it will be very interesting. I talked in my keynote today about the risk of that we have the wallet as the new silo. So we need interoperability not only about wallets, so I can use my German wallet in France, we need interoperability of the verifiable credentials which can easily flow from wallet to wallet and back and be synced, etc.. I think if we don't solve this, we are in trouble.
Absolutely. The interoperability is key. And having that network of interoperable wallets is really important. And as you said in your keynote, I don't want to use 30 wallet, maybe two, maybe three for the different personas that you also pointed out. That is absolutely valid. I maybe want a personal wallet. I maybe want a work wallet. Maybe I need a different wallet because I am the team lead of my tennis club. So I need to, put in all the, all the points that we made or lost. Absolutely okay to then have multiple wallets for my different aspects of my social life. But I definitely don't want to juggle like 15 or 20 of them.
And I don't want to do a strong verification for the recurring attributes which are in every of these wallets. So I want to say, this is Martin, he lives here. And then I want to say, okay, I've done this once and I need it in this wallet and this wallet, in this wallet.
The transfer for of the trust level of certain attributes that are home to certain wallets will be key to the success. There need to be individual attribute based relationships between the wallets. So like we had 20 years ago, the authoritative source for HR data. Well, it sits in the HR information system not an identity. So yeah we we need to define that and we need to make it interoperable.
Which by the way would be a very interesting conversation because I believe, that the way we do it today, so we onboard someone to HR and then bring the person to, the identity to to identity management. This will not survive decentralized identity.
Absolutely. I'm totally with you. This is something, well, an idea I can't talk too much about right now, because we do think that self-sovereign identity and the management of your own aspects of life, your own attributes, and being able to grant them to a possible new employer, right from the security and safety of your own wallet is the game changer and the whole thing right in the application process.
Exactly. And we need you to reconstruct the applications. As I've said in my keynote as well. Sebastian, we are already at end of time we have, basically. So what is, so how do you think about, is this all ready right now to start? Or is it still a vision?
I think we are actually at the inflection point between that vision. We've talked about, for quite a few years now, at EIC here in Berlin and I strongly believe that with the growing number of attendees and stuff, we are at that inflection point. We reached that tipping point where the demand from the market is actually there, and all the pretty stuff that all the experts have developed right now are seeing demand and market pull. So that equilibrium between supplying technology that switches for use case and actual market demand is at top level, and it's up to us experts to make that happen and to convince the market that the time is now.
And there is so much business potential. Sebastian, thank you very much for taking the time to talk to me and thank you to everyone for listening to us.
And thanks for having me again.
Pleasure.
