Building Trusted Identity Services Using Blockchain Technology

This is the era of trusted identity.

In this highly-digitised and interconnected world, one cannot bear to miss out on using identity and access management tools that enable organisations to identify, authenticate, and authorise users and grant them access to the right systems at the right times and for all-reasons-right. These tools, mostly laced up with biometric technology are now also embraced by government institutions to execute various social welfare schemes and grant benefits to the eligible citizens.

But then, these software aren’t a magic bullet. Hackers today are smart enough to find loopholes in software; they break into online facilities and steal confidential data and people’s identities to meet their malicious intents. They compromise systems and bypass firewalls to steal and deliberately use people’s identities and make them fall victim to online fraud.

As a repercussion of identity theft, millions end us facing grand monetary loss. Some also endure the pain of misleading news and outright false information alleging them for things they don’t say or do. All these issues are surging because-

• Large and centralised repositories store sensitive data
• Large organisations ‘own’ personal details and online identities of users
• Centralised repositories don’t use ultra-secured identity verification

Clearly, there’s a need for a model that has a strong foundation of digital trust and identity, and this is where Blockchain-based applications come into play.

To create a hacker-immune ecosystem where people’s identity, financial data, and other sensitive information is safe, routing to the decentralised approach to identity management has emerged as a great idea. Blockchain can rightly incorporate trust, convenience, and innovation in digital identity management and address the challenges of the current system.

What are the advantages of having a decentralised, immutable record of identity?

As many are aware, Blockchain is nothing but a globally distributed digital ledger characterised by append-only nature and use of consensus mechanism.

The records stored on this distributed database are open, immutable, and time-stamped, thus one can’t compromise them. Being so, Blockchain has the potential to create foundational layers of trust and identity for the web/internet by handling the woes related to authentication and verification in several industries. Several government initiatives are planned along the lines of Blockchain biometric screening apps to protect the rights of beneficiaries and build a strong foundation of trust.

Today, Blockchain-enabled applications are massively used to reduce fraudulent activities and check risks that come with digital identity management. These apps can be segmented into four themes, which all cover data protection, privacy, and accountability to benefit the users. Themes include-

1. Trust: Trust is the first that strikes the head when it comes to digital identity management. Decentralisation, coupled with smart contracts, ensure that the records in the Blockchain can be trusted without second thoughts. It is not possible for anyone to edit the records once they are published which creates a natural sense of trust between the parties involved.
2. Verifiability: For government and several private companies, it is must to verify the contents fed in the records. Multiple use cases like identity management, asset registries, finance, voting, and certification demand verification. As Blockchain is public and distributed to n number of nodes, anyone can backtrack all transactions and hashes way back to the genesis block and verify its authenticity. Here identity verification is backed up by cryptographic guarantees of immutability, digital signing, and unchangeable storage of public keys.
3. Transparency: Regulation, transparency, and openness of both data & processes can be amplified by using Blockchain for documentation. Redundant sharing of data in a public Blockchain network, transaction immutability and rock-solid identity frameworks provide a verifiable and easy-to-trace audit of activities like identity, currency use, medical process, etc.
4. Efficiency: Blockchain apps are frequently used to eliminate the intrusion of third parties and middlemen. With Blockchain in place, a number of tasks can be carried out without any human intervention, and this increased automation proves to be a huge perk for disintermediating government services who aim to increase efficiency in domains like identity, banking and regulation, registries, taxation, medical records & access, voting, foreign aid and certification. 

How We are Helping the Government of Nigeria and Tanzania in Digital Identity Management?

Systango loves to embrace new technologies and deploy strategically-planned software solutions that can transform the lives of people for better.

Recently, our dedicated Blockchain developers built SmilePass, a SaaS-based identity authentication and spoof-prevention platform that enables insurers & financial services providers to check issues like social engineering, fraud, and identity theft. The robust solution we built aims to reduce theft-related costs and create an ecosystem of trust and transparency.

SmilePass is geared to resolve all identity management and authentication quandaries. It aptly addresses physical spoofing and man-in-the-middle attack concerns, thus emerging as a befitting choice for healthcare & legal sector.

As a matter of fact, SmilePass has been adopted by the government of Kwara State in Nigeria to supplement its Universal Health Insurance Program and provide primary medical care to 3 million beneficiaries. Citizens are required to take a selfie with a mobile phone and match it with the registered medical records to prove their eligibility to access healthcare with the state.

“When Kwara State realised that fingerprint reading technology was not effective — they approached us to help implement our facial recognition technology.”- says Grant Crow, CEO of SmilePass.

You can read about our complete involvement in building SmilePass here.
SmilePass is one of the ambitious products developed by Systango. Our IT agency, as well as our extended arm Studio Fintech, is committed to building inventive digital products and services that create an impact and touches the lives of billions. So far, we’ve developed, deployed, and supported hundreds of solutions for multiple clients. To discuss your next project, connect here.