In today's business environment, businesses poised for success must create value through collaboration with the outside world. That means extending trust beyond the handshake into the digital world. For many, that means finding secure ways to verify customers and partners.
It's an issue fraught with problems. Many organizations end up relying on identity management products from many different vendors. In effect, they are cobbling together pieces of the digital identity puzzle—identity governance, access management, multifactor authentication, etc.—from different sources.
A 2018 report from Equifax confirmed that that's exactly what most organizations are doing—using a mix of identity verification services and tools. The report found that 66% of IT professionals continue to use legacy technology to support their authentication strategy.
In addition to having to manage multiple products, these solutions often don't address what is being called "identity proofing." Jonathan Care, a senior director at Gartner, says he is seeing solutions that incorporate this type of "identity proofing and corroboration" gaining acceptance in a variety of applications, from employee onboarding to credential recovery.
Identity and access management (IAM) vendor Simeio Solutions says it is solving that problem with Identity Vault, which allows organizations to conduct proofing and ongoing authentication of digital transactions in one platform offered as an identity verification service.
Simeio's mobile and web application helps verify that people are who they say they are. It initiates verification via an official form of identity, uses facial recognition to establish authenticity and then validates using a secondary form of identity. The identity verification service also saves verified claims on a digital wallet, provides the ability to share verified information about people to organizations, and ensures secure data storage and transmission.
"Customers often don’t know what happens to the data that they share with a business. This solution puts the data in the hands of the customer and gives them the ability to share it with the businesses they trust with the consent. They can also track the organizations that they have consented to sharing their data with," said Asif Savvas, senior vice president at Simeio Solutions.
In what Gartner sees as a crowded market, it can be challenging to differentiate on product features. However, Gartner's Care does see some differentiating features with Simeio's identity verification service. One is omnichannel identity portability. "It's the idea that not only is identity something under our control, but we can present a verified, accredited identity over whatever modality we are interacting through—be it web portal, mobile app, contact center or even face-to-face," he said. Care also pointed out the fact that risk scoring is embedded into the vaulted identity.
"The roadmap should include dynamic identity updating to reflect increasing fluidity in what were previously considered fixed attributes of identity, embracing our diverse culture," he said. "The ability to self-manage an identity also needs to have a degree of protection of that self-management function, i.e., 'If my identity vault is taken over, how do I get it back?' Indeed, sci-fi stories have been written around this very topic."
