by Bozho | Sep 29, 2018 | Aggregated, electronic identification, Opinions, security, smartcards
Electronic identity is an important concept as it lies on the crossroads of the digital, the physical and the legal worlds. How do you prove your identity without being physically present? I’ve previously given an overview talk on electronic identification, tackled the high-level and philosophical aspects, and criticized biometric-only identification as insecure. Now I want to list a few practical ways in which eID can be implemented. First, it’s important to mention the eIDAS regulation which makes electronic identity a legal reality. It says what an electronic identification scheme is and what are its legal effects (proving that you are who you claim to be). And it defines multiple “levels of assurance”, i.e. the levels of security of a method of authentication. But it is a broad framework that doesn’t tell you how to do things in the technical world. And while electronic identification is mostly cited in the context of government and municipal services, it applies to private companies as well. Currently in the US, for example, the SSN is used for electronic identification. This is a very poor approach, as leaking the SSN allows for identity theft. In the EU there are many different approaches to do that, from the Estonian PKI-based approach, to UK’s verify initiative, which relies on the databases of private companies. You can see electronic identity as a more legally-meaningful login. You still perform a login, in many cases using username and password as one of the factors, but it carries additional information – who is the actual person behind that login. In some cases it doesn’t have to even give information on...
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