Microsoft is using Blockchain to secure your digital identity
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Blockchain based identity direct, the secure distributed ledger technology first created to track bitcoin ownership, has taken on a number of new roles in recent years tracking anything of value from diamonds to real estate deeds to contracts.
The blockchain offers the promise of a trusted record that can reduce fraud. Some industry experts say that over the coming years, it could be used to control identity information in a more secure blockchain based identity direct. As we have seen, just last week with the massive Equifax hackour personal information is highly vulnerable in online databases in their current form. The argument goes that if our identity were on the blockchain, it would give us more control over this information, and with proper applications allow us to present just the minimum amount of information blockchain based identity direct given party needs to identify us.
That could be your date of birth at a bar, your credit score at a bank or a unique identifier to access an online service. Of blockchain based identity direct experts we contacted, only one was fully enthusiastic about blockchain as an identity tool. Jerry Cuomo, IBM Fellow and VP of blockchain technologies, sees blockchain already having a big impact as people demand more control of their identities.
He says that we are constantly being asked to share personal information to access places or information or to do business with companies — and that each blockchain based identity direct these actions puts us at risk for identity theft. He believes the solution to this problem could lie on the blockchain.
This is self-sovereign identity, and it is already here. Blockchain is the underlying technology paving the path blockchain based identity direct self-sovereign identity through decentralized networks. It sounds pretty good to hear Blockchain based identity direct describe it, yet not everyone is enthusiastic as he is, seeing many obstacles to using the blockchain for identity purposes.
Steve Wilson, an analyst at Constellation Research, who has studied the blockchain extensively has serious reservations about it as an identity management system.
Blockchains were designed to solve problems quite different from identity management IDM. We need to remember that the classic blockchain is an elaborate system that allows total strangers to nevertheless exchange real value reliably. It works without identity and without trust. Then there are those who fall somewhere in the middle. He envisions a similar set of use cases as Cuomo, but sees a lot of obstacles that stand in the way of using the blockchain blockchain based identity direct implement identity management broadly moving forward.
Better to ask will use cases emerge that blockchain-related technologies are uniquely qualified to solve. Likely there will be some. Like any emerging technology, there are going to be a range of opinions on its viability. Using the blockchain as an identity management system is no different.
It will probably begin to take on some role over the next five years because the promise is just so great, but how extensive that will be depends on how the industry solves some of the outstanding issues.
No, probably not It sounds pretty good to hear Cuomo describe it, yet not everyone is enthusiastic as he is, seeing many obstacles to using the blockchain for identity purposes.
