Do you know who has access to what this is?
The identity at the center podcast?
If you're looking for identity and access management talk
you've come to the right place and now on to the show, Welcome
to the identity of the center podcast.
I'm Jeff. And that's Jim.
Hey, Jim hey, Jeff. So we're going to skip our
normal friendly, upfront inane. Banter, jump straight into
today's topic which is blockchain, identity calculator.
That's why most of the people have maybe we should start over,
but as I was going to joke around and say that's why most
of the people listen to our podcast or banter beginning,
banter of friend, you know what, we're going to leave that in
because It just shows that real life people.
Yes, we too. Sometimes will stumble over
things but that's fine. So we're going to skip the inane
banter which we just had and get right into blockchain identity.
It's the topic that you and I have been discussing off and on
since we started this podcast, so back in July.
So, a couple months now, we've brought in some experts to help
us do today, to help us with that conversation.
We have from ID ramp.com, Mike deasy.
How you doing? Mike, I'm doing well.
Q. Thanks for having me on the
show, thanks for joining us before we get started here.
What if you could just kind of give a brief introduction of
yourself and your kind of role in the I am space and then we'll
jump right into the blockchain Extravaganza.
Sure. Yeah I d-- ramp was really just
born out of out of identity challenges and complex corporate
identity ecosystems that we would work in.
And, you know, I would say the last 18 months, we really
converted to adopting I'm more of a blockchain based model and
integrating the blockchain based identity into our existing, into
our existing Federation story for Enterprises.
So that's that's where idea, rep is and where we came from.
And yeah, we're excited to talk about it.
So before we get too far down the pipeline, I think we
probably want to talk about what is blockchain?
Can you give a brief or a simple explanation around that as maybe
something that you would describe it to your mother or a
young child? Is that possible certainly?
Yeah, I know. And that's that's the right
place to start because it really frames everything else.
And one of the most important things about talking blockchain,
identity is really dispelling, you know, and outlining.
What it's not right, because that's always where the
confusion comes in. Everybody has a notion of a
blockchain and, and cryptocurrencies and all the
places that we have familiarity. And so, so yeah, let me go
through a scenario because I think this really He draws a
pretty pretty fine point on how blockchain is used in identity
verification and an authentication.
So let's assume that I want to know something about you.
So I may be a home address, for example.
Now I can certainly ask you and you can tell me and and and you
know, I had no reason to really not believe that but what if I
need a little more proof you could you can pull your driver's
license, right? Out of your out of your physical
wallet, your leather wallet. And you can show that to me and
I'd say, you know, I'm pretty, I'm pretty comfortable that,
that I now have the address. What if I really wanted to know?
If what if you pull out your passport and showed me the
address for your passport? And then maybe you dug around
and found your voter ID card. And you pull that out and said,
here's an address on this. Now I'm really sure that if I
send you a letter, you're going to get it, right?
I'm pretty sure I've got your physical address.
That's the way the world works today.
So, What is happening in the industry right now is all of
those government issue credentials that I just
mentioned. There are projects going on all
over the world where government entities and corporations are
are transforming the way they issue those physical credentials
and also issuing a digital counterpart.
So many states in the u.s. here are are either active and
projects or looking at projects to perform digital Digital
copies of your driver's license. And all of that stuff is going
to is going to be issued and live together.
And now it opens the market to applications to create digital
wallets instead of physical wallets for you to hold those
credentials. And the really important thing
is that you are holding those credentials, right?
It's not being held in some cloud-based service, or Google,
or Facebook, or someone else. That's acting as a as a champion
of your identity or a steward of your identity.
Those are, those are yours and they're issued in some, in some
digital wallet and that could be an app on your smartphone, it
could be a website somewhere. I mean, there's going to be a
lot of different permutations of digital wallets, but the
takeaway is ultimately, you are responsible for the information
in there and you alone have the ability to Grant access to the
to the content contained within so.
So how does that pertain to the block?
You know, I didn't mention anything about storing
information on the blockchain because in fact we're not right?
And this scenario those credentials are being held in
your personal wallet and and and here's where blockchain fits.
So back in our scenario, now I have my digital wallet and it
created it contains those three, those three digital credentials.
My digital, driver's license, voter ID, and passport.
And now I'm going to ask you digitally to prove your address.
All right. So this is some some application
or some site or something that I've developed and I'm going to
say I would really like to know your home address.
And I'm going to ask specifically for your home
address, from your driver's license, and your passport, and
your voter ID card. What happens is you're going to
receive a prompt right from your digital wallet and it's going to
say, hey Mike really wants to know your address from these
three sources. Are you willing to share that
information and I'm going to say Sure and I send that information
back to back to the the application and I now have a
tested that digitally. So that's great.
But it's not any more secure, right?
All I've done is trade one, physical process.
Showing you a credential for a digital one block chain allows
when that issue or issues that credential.
So the state issues that driver's license, they sign that
with some cryptography and they can store or those keys or store
that representation think of it as like a certificate of
authenticity, right? And they say I certify that this
information contained within this credential that I have
issued Mike is accurate and it's valid hasn't been tampered with
and it has not been revoked. So so now what happens in that
application when the application asks for that address in the
three different sources, it can also go to the blockchain and
Wide real-time validation that. All three of those things are
still valid. And if all of that checks out
now, I absolutely know that that's your address.
So that's the role. The blockchain plays in
identity. It's never storing the
information that you hold near and dear.
It's only providing the ability to validate that information on
a on a globally deployed Network.
So what happens when there is a conflict in the accuracy
information, what if my wallet is different than let's say the
driver's license or the DMV, right?
They would say yeah, this this license is valid or not.
How does that get resolved? Sure.
So, if and this, at the risk of getting, you know, to technical
the proof that is asking, for that makes that determination.
So, if I asked for your address, your wallet can return an
address from any credential that satisfies that.
If I specifically, Ask for your drivers, like the address
contained with on your driver's license.
That's the only credential that can provide that proof.
So, in the case of where that information is not available,
then it's up to you. I guess, as the as the proving
party to decide, how to how to go by that, you can say, okay?
Well, since you don't have an address from a state issue,
driver's license. Maybe I'll take an address from,
you know, some other some other credential or some other piece
of information. Is that does that answer your
question? Yeah, I think so.
I think one of the things that I'm curious about to is, you
know, one of the concepts of blockchain least that way I
understand is you have this immutable record, right?
And the data essentially, traverses the chain and it's not
really held any one spot if I wanted to tamper with one data
source, theoretically, there should be some check right
somewhere that would say, wait this data source is out of sync
with all these others. What's going on here, correct?
Right? Yep, you're absolutely right.
And what we're seeing, Big what we're seeing an emergence and
now are things like like Sovereign Foundation you know
which is they're building a public permission ledger so and
they're providing a governance layer to help with things like
that. So you know where the big one of
the really big challenges is we have to provide public proofing
so that anybody can validate our ask for validation of those
credentials, but in order to provide governance, we really
have to have Control over the, you know, the people that are
issuing, those credentials and how those credentials are being
issued. So, so I think that's why it's
actually another reason why this technology is now ripe for
adoption. Because we have some of that
governance concept and governance layer in place and
it's not truly, you know, the Wild Wild West.
What's the speed? Like if you have a is it the
bigger? The blockchain?
It's just faster connections are needed or how does that is the
processing take place when you've got you know let's say
Pretty big worldwide blockchain going.
What applications have to take into account to, you know,
expected time to read, you know, for results.
It's those sorts of things. Sure.
And the nature of the nature of the, of the network, as I have
described, it really takes a lot of the complex processing out of
it. The amount of information, and
the amount of those, those proofs that are being generated
or pretty lightweight because of the, the nature of what they're
validating. I I don't know exactly how many,
how many stewards are on sovereigns network.
Now I think there's an excess of 70, so there's a lot of nodes
that are running globally. Handling, this handling, this
load. And we've never, you know, never
seen any indication that performance is going to be a
problem in the way that this network is designed.
Anyway, got it. Now you mentioned the term
Steward for the folks that aren't familiar with that term.
How do you define Steward on a blockchain?
Sure. So a steward is an organization
that has been vetted and To the ability to promote, trust
anchors. And a trust anchor is basically
anyone that runs a node on the network.
So unlike other public non permission blockchains, where
you can just stand up a server and plug in to the to the
network for for a permission to block chain with with the
governance layer such as this, you have to be, you have to be
vetted and certified. So Steward has the ability to
take an organization and say okay, Okay.
You want to start issuing credentials and and doing proofs
to use for your services or employees or whatever.
The case might be a steward where has the ability to form
that relationship and Grant them the ability to, to deploy their
own nodes on the network. So who does the wedding?
Then of the stewards is that an organization like Sovereign or
some other organization that would be responsible for that?
Yeah, that's correct. The Sovereign Foundation.
Why that's actually that's their biggest role is just to provide
that the oversight in the end, the structure and doing that
vetting of the stewards, got it. And then I would assume it was
that. Let me say, I hope that once you
become a steward there is still some sort of process to validate
that, that still accurate going forward, right?
Is that okay? You're always certification or
some other time frame, that's correct.
It is that it's a, it's not a terribly easy process.
There's a lot of, there's a lot of Hoops.
Jump through but but we found it.
We found a pretty easy pretty straightforward and it's
definitely it's definitely worth the heavy lifting up front just
because there's so much certainty and control over
things like performance and and and knowing that you know,
knowing that this people that are signing these requests have
actually been through that that governance process.
So are different blockchains? Interoperable with each other.
That is a very, very good question and there's a lot of
work going on in the industry right now.
So did routing the decentralized identifier became a standard
very recently and it is the standard that everyone is
marching toward right now and using whether you're building on
ethereum or more hyper Ledger everyone is has standardized on
this decentralized identifier, which is great news for the
industry. There is still A lot of a lot of
routing conversations going on and there's a working group for
the called Universal resolver, which is basically a way to use
prefixes. In the end, the decentralized
identifiers to handle the routing between networks.
That is going to be a place where we obviously have to have
some Evolution to make sure that, that, that all of the
different networks that are coming up to handle identities,
have the ability to, you know, to accept and consume
credentials no matter where they're created.
So we're still pretty early pretty early days in that in
that conversation. But there are a lot of people at
that table and the big, you know, the big people in the
industry or certainly leading that charge and making sure that
the technologies that come out from Microsoft or IBM and the
hyper Ledger team are all consumable and interoperable.
Okay, I would imagine that. That's something that's going to
have to rapidly iterate, if blockchains going to grow.
Because I can see something like people getting fear of vendor
lock-in or something like that, where they're stuck on one
chain, right? And they should have gone to
another. I like it it very similar to the
kind of like Gmail versus Yahoo mail in the old days and you
know now it's out looking at which Mail system are you on.
It's got a very deep hook into people and it's very difficult
to make change sometimes? Yeah, but I'm also wondering
what about International Well, concerns where you might have, I
don't know, we use the dresses and example, but some of those
conventions, you know, change from country to Country and
certainly, you know, language differences, I'm wondering, are
there any impacts when it comes to, especially if you're looking
at a global Enterprise? Maybe talk about that.
Mike. Yeah, I think the I mean the did
spec is pretty routable. I don't I don't think there's
any issues internationally. I know of anyway, there are in
fact, most of the work that that is being done in practice right
now. Are coming from places not in
the u.s., right. The province of British Columbia
is way ahead of where we are. They're issuing digital
credentials to their citizens today that are actually, I
believe they're going to go on The Sovereign Network and be
provable there. There's other other countries
that are, you know, I said much further ahead than where we are.
And so we're catching up though and really things like like the
network and the the ability for us to interoperate with
Technologies as the technology like, you know, hyper Ledger and
Hyper Ledger in D, for example, is suspect that that everyone on
Sovereign or a lot of most people in Cyber Network anywhere
following this. This Indie spec.
And what that means is, I can issue a credential and that
credentials consumable by a multitude of wallets.
You don't have to use, just my, my agent or my application in
order to hold that credential and provide validation of that.
So that that's the common framework that everybody is
writing to. And that's why that's why it's
getting exciting in this industry because we're seeing
now multiple people come in and and are able to issue
credentials. And those credentials are
immediately consumable by a host of other applications.
And so, so either way, I think that's the most exciting thing
that I'm seeing right now, what about data sovereignty?
I know that, you know, there's there's a big deal sometimes
about where the data is stored countries like Russia and China
tend to want to have it and within their own reach and
control and be able to inspect the data.
How would that apply to the blotching that spreads across?
And by its very nature, distributes that data.
Much everywhere. Yeah and and you might be a
little bit beyond me there, I'm not sure if there are any active
nodes running and in Russia or China and and how that would how
that would play, I do know that by nature of the data.
There's not any there's not any personally identifiable or any
data that we would consider it risk, right?
These are just records of decentralized identifiers and
and a public key you know so there's not any significant Data
at risk. That would that would cause
concern. But I do appreciate fully having
worked in some of those regions. The complexity of just
deploying, the technology may be a challenge in itself, so maybe
we can shift gears and talk anymore on the internal
Enterprise use case. What are some current or maybe
near-term use cases that you could see.
Let's just take, for example, a US company, you know, they
operate their own environment and you know, they sell It's or
whatever it may be. Things are taking place inside
the firewall, where would blockchain come in handy for
something like that? Sure, I see it.
And I've been around, you know, the identity space for a long
time and one of the biggest heaviest and most expensive
systems to maintain is the identity and access management
system. It's, it's a beast and it's
involved in every transaction, every service authentication,
every user Authentication, Goes through the identity and access
management system. So if you have an application
that is very heavy in nature and we all know obviously, you know,
8:00 9:00 eastern time when everybody's logging in and
onboarding. That's always a huge Spike.
And I am systems, right? For for an organization that has
primary user base and Eastern us.
We see you know, systems are ramping up their scaling up
providing more resources and it's you know, there's there's a
Exposure. Also, if that system happens to
fail. So the I am systems today are
critical but they're also front and center.
All of that information is exposed publicly because our
services are tied to it directly and and they're absolutely
critical, right? If a system is deferring to
that, I am system for for authorization and
authentication. It absolutely has to be
available hundred percent of the time.
So one, you know, one thing that we think of where digital Real
credentials really plug in and help here is they can they can
help flatten out that that Peak and Valley.
Spike that the I am systems go through.
So if you consider that a user comes in and they log in through
your IM system and some intelligent policy says okay
you're in Human Resources. So we're going to give you a
credential to use sap or something and maybe it says okay
here's a This guy we're going to give you access to you
Salesforce and issues credentials for the services
that these users consume throughout the course of their
day. And then those systems that that
the users are interacting with instead of deferring, back to
the identity management system. If instead, they just say
present your digital credential and I will grant, you access
directly as long as that credential is not been revoked.
Using the same, the same scenario and flow that I
outlined. And at the beginning of the
podcast, right? Where that service says, I just
need to know who you are, and I tell them directly from that,
credential that I present from my personal wallet, and that
gets validated on The Ledger. So the Enterprise is not revoked
my ability to log into Salesforce.
Therefore I can then, you know, then I'd never have to go back
through. I never have to be dependent
upon that identity, and access management system.
I still may want those metrics and all that can be baked in But
they can be distributed at the perimeter instead of centralized
at the. I am so for a very bursty
service like Sabia webcasting service or something, where we
have 30,000 users, that are going to descend on this
particular platform for a, for a webcast, they're all going to
come in a two to three minute period.
That's going to that's going to really be heavy on the IM
system. You know, it's going to it's
going to cause a great Spike big load and a A real dependency on
that to be up and active. If instead we just say, oh,
you're registering for a webcast crate.
Here's a digital credential, and issue that to the consumer.
Then all the consumer has to do is go to that web, casting
service present that credential be validated and and and go do
their webcast. And the I am never sees that
traffic. So I think there is significant
performance you know, in cost Savings in infrastructure that
an Enterprise can realize but also You know, security, you can
literally take the IM system off the front line.
You know, I RI the IM system that we use it.
ID ramp isn't even publicly available so it all sits on the
internet and you pick up your credentials and then you go
interact with your services and and the identity and access
management system is never physically available to the
public internet. Hey Mike, when you mentioned
that you would take that webcasting example.
Thank you, dish. You a credential to the user and
they would present that certain that credential the other
wallet. So, picturing something in their
browser or something is managing a certificate so can you get
down into the, you know, basic blocking and tackling of how
would the user go about presenting?
That sure certainly could be. It certainly could be something
in the browser that was referencing a Kind of an
identity Hub, they contained that you know that collection of
wallets right those storing them on behalf of the users it could
also be a personal wallet application living on your iOS
or Android phone. So there's it could.
I mean literally the wallet itself is just a virtual
software agent and it can be it can live anywhere you could
write it right into the browser. If you if you choose.
We see the most popular without question the most popular way.
That those digital, those personal digital wallets are
being developed, today is smartphone applications.
So there these are sitting on IOS and Android devices.
But there are also a lot of a lot of players that are building
the ability to really hold those in kind of a kind of a personal
wallet identity management system at that point if you
will. And while I feel that has less
long-term value than Then something I give you personally,
I'm totally understand and and respect the fact that that we
may need some, some kind of a middle middle Gap there.
Before we get to a full user user hosted wallet, but you
know, I'll Riff on that a little bit because there is a big
advantage to a personal wallet. If we have a world where there's
a bunch of these personal identity wallets and they're
coming on the scene, right? There's more and more every day.
Day. And and I have my employees go
out and download one of these personal identity wallets,
right? They and it's theirs.
It's their identity. They create their identity.
However, they see fit. They put the attributes in there
that they see fit if I can interoperate that, interoperate
with that as an Enterprise, and I can say great, you got your
personal wallet. Here's some credentials that you
need from my organization to interact with these services
that I think you need access to. And the user says, okay, great.
I'll just put those in my personal wallet.
You're really tearing down a huge barrier and a huge wall
that exists today between the employee and the employer.
Now, my employer is is literally my technology partner, right?
I'm not saying here is an identity I created for you and
to use it. Go through this proprietary
laptop with this proprietary, VPN client, and all of this
really proprietary software. Instead, I'm just saying these
are your access credentials and you put them wherever you hold
your identity information and it will seamlessly coexist.
I mean, I think that's a very powerful message that the
Enterprise can put out as well and it really does bring the two
closer together and in true partnership form, which is a
popular place to be for the Enterprise today.
I think it's cool. I think it's powerful.
I just don't think companies are there yet.
I think it's there's there's a trust issue.
I think I feel like we're organizations Do not want to
expose their active directory, right to outside of the network,
for example, but I see the benefit of having something like
an apple wallet, right? Or a Google pay wall or a
Samsung pay wallet where your credentials are in there and
stored and you have a way to visually organize them and
somehow use that kind of analogy to authenticate to a network is,
are you aware of any companies who are doing, what you just
described where they're letting their Employees, give them that.
Digital credential, I'm not obviously other than ID room we
do. And, and, you know, others that
are that are close to the technology are doing similar
things. But yeah, that is and I agree
with you on one front that I think they're there.
They are standoffish about access but I also think that
lends itself to this technology very well, they don't want to
provide access to that active directory.
So you know, so hide it, right? Keep it behind the scenes.
Command, I authenticate, and maybe this is even it could be
as literal as going into HR, you know, and for your onboarding
process and at that time they say, yep, your you and they
issue that credential and it lives in your wallet.
It doesn't tell anyone anything other than, you know, you, I've
got this association with my employer and so there's no,
there's no information really to leak their secure.
They're more secure than allowing you to go to active
directory, over some internet connection and in anything short
of, you know, an encrypted connection VPN.
So, I mean, I think there's a lot of Technology advantages
that we could evolve into that are going to help tighten
security and control that information, as well as
providing a reduced friction for user consumption.
I also think I mean, to your point.
Jeff. I think that a lot of companies
are followers, right? And so, but there are some
companies that will they see a solution that is Better in some
way or another, you know, be leaders in the that way.
And, you know, I think if governments are, you know,
adopting this and it's some of the bigger players like Apple
and Google started adopting, those then you'll see more.
I mean, certainly the company said, I tend to work with are
not looking to be bleeding edge, right?
If you're doing Enterprise identity management, it's not an
area. Where you want to take a lot of
risks. However, technology leader
companies, when they start to say this is important to we're
using it, other companies will follow soon.
Yeah, I agree with that. I think there is, you know, the
and you're right. The Enterprise is pretty
conservative with how they're doing this, which is why I
really believe it's important to build Bridges, from where, you
know, from where we're at today into this new technology.
So we're not asking. For lift and shift.
Ironically, I think there's a huge Improvement to the SMB
market and the smaller organizations that that don't
have the infrastructure and Staffing of some of these large
Enterprise to protect themselves.
I think this this, you know, even a even kind of a closed
ecosystem for credentialing for their employees is is a huge
step forward if their employees can bring a and all a self
Sovereign identity and they don't have to build out a
complex identity management infrastructure.
Instead, all they have to do Is associate a set of metadata,
with some personal identity. There's, you know, there's a,
that's a, that's a transformational thing as well.
It gets them a lot more velocity and a lot more control over
what's going on without without having to go and invest in
these. Massive, I am systems that the
Enterprises is buying, so I think there's I think there's
some opportunity for for both sides there as well.
One thing that this really You're staying and I think this
is where I mean, I think this is what's going to help really lead
to a lot of adoption as well as if we assume now that our
government credentials are being digitally issued and that's
going to happen, right? We're going to have there's
going to be the debates with, where they go and
interoperability, and all that stuff.
We're going to have to figure that out.
And I think we figure that out by Leading instead of, instead
of waiting, right? We try to inform and guide these
organizations and Enlighten them into the art of the possible
before they end up just building another, another set of silos
that we have to that, we have to worry about tearing down some
point in the future. But what really starts to happen
is if I mean, think about onboarding an employee.
Now, if I have, if I know that you as a consumer, have a
credential from the Social Security Administration, who by
the way, is working on that very thing.
And I know that you have a state Driver's license or at least I
hope you have a state-issued driver's license and you come
into on board for HR maybe I want to validate so I can simply
present a proof request to you as a consumer and say we would
really like to know your educational background.
We want to know your degree status, you know we want to know
your state of residence, driver's license, just whether
you have it or not, whether it's valid.
Maybe we ask for a confirmation of the Address or whatever, but
it really is. It's a game-changer from an
identity proofing perspective. And from an onboarding
perspective, a lot of the stuff that we go through over and over
and over again. As we on board employees or we
set employees up simply, you know, wouldn't be needed or will
be much more easy to access and we don't have to create
replication of that information over over again.
Instead, we just store an associate of record to a
decentralized Identity that we know of belongs to you and your
in your personal wallet and we can request information from
that at any time. So it really provides a much
more streamlined workflow and the big Power of using these
credentials and credential based systems is not in the ability to
say. Okay, I'm going to issue you
this thing, and you can come back later and I'm going to ask
you to present me that thing like a password, right?
Ami passwords. We all agree are.
They should have been gone years and years ago and we're still
Still, we're still fighting them but that's what a password is,
right? You can you give me this thing
and then when you come back I'm going to challenge you and ask
you for with credentials. I never have to give it to you,
right? I mean, we never have to do
that. All I have to do is all I have
to know is what I'm asking for. So you come to my service?
If all I need is your email address.
Why am I going to force you to create a new account and create
a new password and all the stuff.
When I just say, you have a valid email address and if you
can satisfy that I let you in, so it really changes.
It changes a lot of things because now we don't have to
create an issue. Something for everything that
we're trying to prove, all we have to do is know what
questions to ask that makes sense.
Let's talk a bit about ID ramp itself as a product so I'm a
see. So and we get in the elevator at
the same time. What problems are you going to
help me solve? Sure.
So ID ramp is ID rope will Give you the ability to bring in any
identity source so this can be an IM stack, it could be
whatever you have and connect that with traditional
Federation. Protocols Samo off, open ID
connect take your pick apis and we can provide credential
issuance based on that metadata. So we can do.
The example I used earlier was with something that's absolutely
possible. I can say all of people in
human. Arizona issue a credential for
human resources and then and then I can ask for that.
So idea app also then provides the the other side of that
equation where I can figure that service.
You know, I mentioned, I mentioned sales for Salesforce
today, doesn't know how to go and ask hyper Ledger or The
Sovereign Foundation Network, or they don't know how to build
that bridge into that into that system and ask for those
credentials directly so idea, right?
Provides tools and services to do that as well.
You go into Salesforce and you can just can just configure as a
sample service or oauth or whatever put it back to ID ramp
and ID ramp will do that translation for you.
So, what we've built today is the bridge that will take an
Enterprise from a from a traditional, I am funnel based.
I am workflow process to a decentralized credential based
In process with simple reconfiguration and and clicks.
So, we support that in a, you know, just kind of an a
configuration pay as you go type model or we provide apis and
then web hooks, you can bake that into native applications,
you know, or we can help you get there.
As I said, we're Steward and Trust anchors.
So we can take, we can take an organization all the way to
standing up their own nodes and educating their staff on how to
How to get closer to to building those things themselves.
So that's where ID ramp is is focused today and we have a long
Heritage of traditional I am we understand Enterprise, I am and
the challenges that exist there very well and so we felt that it
was our really our responsibility if we're if we're
out here saying credential based dish access management is, is
this really cool thing that can help save you time and money and
make your Make your business more more profitable and
successful and secure. And we really had an obligation
to build the tools and services that the Enterprise needs today.
In order to dip their toes in the water and start using this.
So giving them the ability to just say, not.
Just say, I want to take this one service and I want to take
these 10 users and let them log in with the distributor
credential an issue that might be distributed credential.
That's really what we've built. So it's a way to really do your
own. Proof of concept and figure out
if the technology is right for you, it's think.
So. Where do I find talent to help
me with this? Because I think there's this,
this, I don't, it's a stigma or not, but watching is complex.
You know what do I need? Is an organization to dabble
into this, right? Yeah.
And you're exactly right. It's it's growing the community
of people that are knowledgeable about this is growing
exponentially every day but the Exciting thing than that is the
tools. The products and services are
coming on board or really help the Enterprise and, and Beyond
right to adopt this technology. So ID ramp.com, I mean,
certainly we're willing to help those other organizations that
are building similar tools products and services, that will
help the Enterprise really understand what the stuffs all
about and how to do it. And like I said, the beautiful
thing is it's all open, you know?
I mean there's really no There's nothing close.
There's nothing proprietary and what we're doing, if an
organization comes in and uses our technology or technology
from from one of our competitors, that that's using
the same underlying governance framework and underlying
technology stack, there's absolutely nothing preventing
them from completely displacing, what they put in place with with
ID, ramp with their own technology, just simply by
learning more and, and standing up their own.
And so that's the real exciting thing as we give its future
proofing, your investment because you're not walked into a
single vendor, it's truly vendor agnostic.
So, what I run then my own blockchain infrastructure.
If I'm ever ization, I want to get into this stand up my own
notes. Yep, you could.
You could come to idea up and say, hey, we really want to be.
We really want to stand up nodes on, on sovereigns network, for
example, and and make us a trust anchor.
We go through some paperwork, you trade, some employees and
and stand it up. It up and you have the ability
to issue your own credentials, build your own proofs.
Do everything you want to do directly with the network at
that point. Okay what about some IGA focused
use cases around blockchain? So identity Governor's
Administration. Typically this is where
automation of identities get built out.
You mentioned you know tying things to an HR Source access
review certification. Do you see any play with
watching helping with that in the future?
I do. And it's, it's hard to visualize
all the different places that can go.
But I think that, I think that anytime you have the user more
involved in the decision of what is being disseminated and where
that only, that only can improve your your governance.
In fact, if you think of an example, where cash, what's one
of the examples? I came out the other day, where
you're buying a buying a stock Right.
You're going to call up your local, Ed Jones, broker guy.
And you're going to say, I want to buy, I want to buy a couple
shares of Tesla because I think it's a good investment right
now. And he says, all right great.
I'll place that order for you and then and then it tanks and
you're going wait a minute. I didn't do that.
Right. So now is it's just really your
word against his if you think about it, if you think about
what we just went through and digital credentials and
involving me as a participating party in, Now, think about how
that workflow changes I can call and make that request and he can
program that order. But before that order goes, I'm
going to receive, I'm going to receive notification saying,
hey, we're going to going to make this transaction on your
behalf. Are you okay with it and I say,
yep. And now you have, you know?
Now I'm involved right. It's more than just well.
Yeah, I called and I actually have skin in the game now.
I'm literally confirmed that on a device.
That's biometrically checked my, you know.
My signature, we know that it's me that that made that request.
So I think that's a game changer.
And it really opens up a lot in the governance space to really
helping organizations control who's doing what with their
information. I can imagine casinos might be
interested in that. Yeah, yeah, all right, well
before I wrap it up here because you've given us certainly a lot
to think about and just for the folks who are listening and know
there was kind of a lot to cover today.
So I'll be sure to put links for idear.
Then some other information in the show notes, how should
people get in touch with idear a Mike?
Sure start with the website. We have a lot of good
information out there and and contacts ID ramp.com.
And you can always send an e-mail to info ID.
Ramp.com somebody to get back in touch with you.
We love talking to, we love talking to people about the
technology. We love talking to companies
about their potential interests and Synergy, so yeah.
Please reach out there. Going to be any conferences
coming up like gardeners. I am.
Summit. Biggest, we are not going to the
gardener, I am summit. We're going to be at the no 2020
conference in an April, we're going to be at the connect with
on next month, in Provo. And then I believe the next big
one is probably I see in Europe will be over there.
So yeah well and we'll I think we have a schedule of
conferences out there. I'm not sure if we do right now.
But check the website. All right well I think this is a
probably a pretty good spot to leave it for this week as
always. If folks out there listening
have questions they can always get a hold of the podcast at
questions at identity. The center.com want to thank
Mike for my dear Aunt from joining us.
Thank you very much, Mike also want to.
Yeah, I also want to thank the identity team.
I didn't come up with all these questions on my own.
I'm not that smart. So I certainly crowdsource some
things to think about as we kind of move forwards, want to thank
them for their questions. And then most of all want to
thank everyone who's listening taking the time out of their day
to listen into this. And thank you all for sharing
and we'll talk to you guys in the next one.
You've been listening to the identity at the center podcast
to access all episodes visit identity at the center.com.