What are the market dynamics and trends that will shape the digital identity industry in 2019? Data breaches have become more common in recent years with organizations suffering at least two or three per year, costing them an average of $3.86 million. At the same time, consumers have become more demanding than ever, which means that service providers are under incredible pressure to deliver digital services that are not only secure, but also provide frictionless user experiences.
The existence of Trusted Digital Identities will be a major factor in meeting those demands and here are six reasons why.
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Ongoing pressure across industry for data privacy regulations
There has been a significant raise in complaints of social media user data misuse in 2018. Facebook in particular made headlines last year with numerous high-profile data breaches including the Cambridge Analytica scandal. Customer and regulator concern about how data can be used for monetization and how identities can easily be stolen, replicated, curated and morphed for fraud are at risk of creating a climate for increased regulation as well as different regulation alignments in different countries.
Consumers are reclaiming data ownership and having increased digital interactions make them more concerned than ever about data privacy and identity theft. We will experience continuing pressure across industries for having more data protection regulations such as GDPR across the globe.
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AI and machine learning as a double-edge sword
According to the Breach Level Index, almost 15 billion data records have been exposed since 2013. In the first half of 2018, more than 25 million records were compromised every day – that’s 291 records every second. These include medical, credit card or financial data and other personally identifiable information. Although there are many AI and machine learning techniques in place working to prevent data breaches, they will still happen as fraudsters are leveraging the same technologies we use to prevent them.
For example, thanks to advances in AI and machine learning chatbots can now be easily exploited by hackers to discover new vulnerabilities in real time in order to deceive users into clicking dubious links and handing over sensitive information. Malicious chatbots look exactly like the regular ones, but instead of providing genuinely useful information, they will ask you for your personal information, which will be used by hackers for malicious purposes.
On the more positive side, big data and AI lead to vast opportunities to enable trust and collaboration across the ecosystem of technology enablers, service providers and end users to prevent attacks. We expect an increase in the use of AI and machine learning technologies in strengthening identity verification accuracy and offering an increase in trust.
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Protecting sensitive data in mobile devices
As more than 52% of global web traffic comes from mobile devices, it is not a surprise that fraudsters are also migrating to this platform. Research shows that 48% of phishing attacks take place on mobile and users are three times more likely to get exposed from their mobile rather than from their desktop.
Sensitive data stored in our mobile devices can be compromised through applications, the mobile network and the device itself. To ensure good positioning in this mobile economy, service providers need to ensure customer trust and data protection. Having a trusted digital identity system in place proves essential for ensuring this.
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Monetization of mobile identity
The monetization of mobile identity will also take a new focus in 2019, by combining several attributes capable of adapting to local regulations and service providers’ enrolment requirements.
Investments in mobile technologies that capture, verify and authenticate identities based on a combination of identifiable attributes, will be a strategic step for service providers to enable security, trust and seamless end-user experience.
Furthermore, the capacity and flexibility of ensuring remote document verification will present an advantage for service providers allowing them to capture and verify customer information. Plus, they will be able to maximize their reach via mobile devices at the same time.
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Biometrics will continue to grow
The industry keeps exploring new forms of physical and behavioral biometrics to ensure secure authentication via mobile devices across all channels. The combination of technology innovation with convenience and security will bring us closer to a “plug and play” solution, while standards like the FIDO Alliance and Mobile Connect will provide us with more options to get there.
Biometrics will continue to go mainstream and the use of multiple biometrics such as voice, face or behavioral biometrics will enable not only multi-factor authentication, but also more security with less friction.
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Passwords will become a thing of the past
According to the Verizon Data Breach Investigation Report, 81% of data breaches involve weak, default, or stolen passwords. Furthermore, many customers claim that they are getting frustrated when creating new user IDs and passwords for digital services and tend to select one of the 25 easy to remember passwords for their accounts. Consumers no longer trust password-based single-factor authentication and are willing to shift to password-free authentication methods. There is a big opportunity here, especially for those that can offer a biometric alternative.
Banks have already started providing new means for customer authentication when making payments with adopting EMV contactless payment cards with fingerprint authentication which could allow us to pay for anything without needing a PIN code or signature. Online, organizations are exploring the potential of behavioral biometrics, which can analyze the unique way in which you type on a keyboard or even how you move your mouse.
Trusted Digital Identity services are paramount for each step of the customer journey, from onboarding through to authentication to access new services. We’ll be present at MWC Barcelona, so if you want to discuss any of those driving forces for trusted digital identities in more detail, make sure to pop by stand 2J41 in Hall 2 to talk to one of our experts and to try out one of our demos. We look forward to seeing you there!
