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Verifiable data registries
Identity verification Online Authentication Privacy User Identity Verifiable Credentials Verifiable data registries

Verifiable Credentials: How has it Changed the Identity Verification Status


Online authentication has been a challenge to firms, regardless of their shapes and sizes. Despite more advanced cybersecurity solutions, threat actors and criminals continue to find sneaky new ways to access corporate systems. 

Verifiable credentials are one of the methods that is gaining popularity for thwarting account compromise attacks. The concept includes using digital credentials that follow an open standard. Using digital credentials that follow an open standard is the idea. These credentials frequently contain information and components from verified tangible artefacts like a driver's license, passport, or their digital equivalents, such bank accounts. 

Verifiable credentials are desirable because, unlike physical identifiers, they are much less susceptible to forgery and theft because of the usage of digital signatures. These digital credentials can be kept in a digital wallet on a PC or a smartphone, allowing trust to be built both within and between organizations. 

Moreover, it has been swift in gaining popularity at a time when fraud, identity theft, and malware are on the rise. Additionally, when these digital artefacts are paired with a verifiable data registry, security safeguards are multiplied. Verifiable credentials also permit selective disclosure, which lets people choose to disclose only the information they need with a particular entity rather than all of their personal information. 

This reduces the chance of identity theft and helps to protect critical information. We are listing some of the advantages presented by verifiable credentials: 

Truth and Consequences 

Verifying an individual’s identity is an easy task when it comes to the physical world. Birth certificates, utility bills, and government IDs serve as a source to determine that the person is in fact who he claims he is. The person has been verified by a reliable source, and they have been given an artefact they can use to confirm facts. As a result, it is now conceivable for someone to get on a plane, apply for government aid, or open a bank account. 

On the other hand, in the online world, their seems to be no central authority of a person’s identity. Each organization, website, or account needs a unique username and password. While some major corporations, including Google, Apple, and Facebook, have tried to combine identities using their single sign-on (SSO) login credentials, there is still no central authority to certify genuine identities. 

On of the tactics that has emerged as a breakthrough in transforming the physical world’s security into the digital realms is: entering verifiable credentials and verifiable data registries. 

Reliance in Any Situation 

Verifiable credentials can increase system resilience in the event of a network or identity provider failure. For instance, it is still possible to confirm a user's identity if a natural disaster like a hurricane strikes and puts an identity provider offline. The fact that the user's device stores their signed credentials allows them to be supplied to an application, which can then utilize a cached copy of the user's public key to verify the credentials. Another illustration would be cruise ships, which are well known for having unstable or slow satellite Internet connections. Onboard applications may still confirm a user's identity and let users make dinner or entertainment bookings, or book excursions, using the verifiable credentials flow. 

Adopting this Approach 

Shifting to verified credentials with verifiable data registries could itself convey certain challenges. Applications must typically be rewritten in order to support them. By orchestrating the decoupling of identification from apps, this obstacle can be solved. This enables the migration of brittle, legacy services to distributed, robust systems without changing the codebases of the aforementioned legacy applications. 

Companies looking forward to adopting verifiable credentials are advised to focus on two key areas: 

  • Ensuring that the initial verification process is safe and that the source through which credentials are being taken is trustworthy. 
  • To establish a process to deal with problematic cases, like the moments of network outage. 

Several organizations are now realizing the need to take a more sophisticated and forward-looking approach as the issues associated with digital identity verification increase. A route to more effective and resilient security is provided by verifiable credentials and verifiable data registries.  

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Zero Trust
Cyber Security Cyber Threats Security Architecture User Identity Zero Trust

What is Zero Trust Architecture and How it Reduces Cyberthreat Risks?


For the past thirty years, organizations have been focusing on establishing and optimizing complex, wide-area, and hub-and-spoke networks in order to connect online users and company branches to the data center over private networks. 

In order to access applications, users were required to be in a trusted network. These hub-and-spoke networks were apparently protected with numerous appliances such as VPNs and firewalls, included in a “castle and moat” security architecture. 

While this was ultimately useful to the organization and online users when their applications were situated in their data centers, however, in today’s online world, users are more mobile than ever, eventually making it even more challenging to secure the network. 

Organizations on the other hand are directing a digital transformation, engaging in the cloud, mobility, AI, IoT, and OT technologies in order to emerge as more agile and competitive. 

Since users can be found everywhere, data and applications could no longer reside in data centers. They need immediate access to applications from any location at any point in time, in order to collaborate quickly and effectively. Thus, it would be a senseless endeavor to send the data traffic back to the data centers safely. 

This is the reason why organizations are switching from hub-and-spoke networks to direct cloud access, using the internet as the new network.

Perimeter-based Security Fails to Address the Needs of Modern Business

All network elements - users, applications, and devices, are placed on a single flat plane in conventional hub-and-spoke networks. While this makes it convenient for users to access various applications, it would also provide any infected system the exact access. 

Unfortunately, perimeter-based security using VPNs and firewalls fail to secure the network or provide a satisfactory user experience, for cyberattacks keep getting more sophisticated and users work from everywhere. Consequently, organizations encounter cyberattacks and data breaches that have the potential to seriously harm their security. 

Zero Trust Architecture

We must reconsider how connectivity is allowed in our contemporary world, in the context of the pervasive, long-standing challenges posed by legacy network and security systems. Organizations need to shift away from castle-and-moat security and toward a zero-trust architecture that ensures quick and direct access to apps everywhere, at any time, in order to ensure a secure hybrid workplace. 

Zero trust begins by assuming that every element of the network is unreceptive or compromised, allowing access to applications only after users’ identity, device posture, and business context has been verified and policy checks are righteously enforced. 

Zero trust structure requires the data traffic to be logged and monitored, demanding users a degree of visibility that any conventional security control does not support. 

A successful zero-trust architecture subjects each connection to a number of restrictions before establishing a connection, to guarantee that no implicit trust is ever granted. This is made possible in the following steps: 

1. Verify identity and context: Once a user, workload, or device requests a connection, initially, the zero-trust architecture terminates the connection; followed by identifying who is connecting and the users’ motives. 

2. Control risk: Zero trust architecture then assess the risks and potential challenges in regards to the connection request, inspecting the traffic for any cybercrime activity and sensitive information.  

3. Enforce policy: At last, a per-session-based policy is being enforced, in order to evaluate what actions would be taken pertaining to the connection established. 

A zero-trust architecture thus aids in minimizing the attack surface, stopping threats from moving laterally, and mitigating breach risks. The best way to implement it is through a proxy-based architecture, which connects users directly to applications rather than the network, allowing the application additional restrictions prior to the approval or denial of the connections' permit.  

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