By: Venkata Ram Tej Kuncham, Associate Consultant

Today, be it an individual or an institution, data privacy and security have become paramount. Some individuals want complete control over their identities, while others do not have proper proof of identity due to inaccessibility and lack of documents. Institutions, on the other hand, are struggling with increasing fraudulent activities and third parties’ sluggish verification processes. Hence, the need of the hour is an authentic package or wallet of identity data, which can be presented readily by the individual and verified by the service provider seamlessly. To address this need, organizations are building Self-sovereign Identity (SSI) platforms based on distributed ledger technologies (DLT).

How does it work?

Verifiable Credential Trust Triangle

Source: A solution for privacy-preserving Verifiable Credentials | by Nader Helmy | MATTR | Medium

SSI enables people or businesses to store their identity data on their own devices without relying on a central repository. There are three parties in the process: Issuer, who issues credentials, Holder, who owns them, and Verifier, who validates their authenticity. When holders sign up for an SSI platform, they are issued verifiable credentials by the issuer. The credentials are linked to a decentralized identifier (DID), consisting of a public and private key. A decentralized identifier is an encrypted, unique ID consisting of an individual’s personal/academic/professional data. On the creation of the DID, a user or holder can produce the corresponding verifiable credential as a QR code to prove his/her identity to a verifier (or service provider). The verifier then checks for the authenticity of the identity by confirming the proof of control or ownership of the presented credentials using blockchain, as depicted in the above infographic.

Basic Architecture of a Decentralized Identity

The core blocks to build an SSI platform are Hyperledger Aries, Hyperledger Indy, and Hyperledger Ursa frameworks.

Source: 2020 – How SSI Went Mainstream – Sovrin

A Self-sovereign Identity is based on below principles. These range from enhancing security and transparency to ensuring portability and control.

• Minimalistic: to disclose the minimum possible data required for a task
• Security: to ensure privacy and confidentiality
• Transparency: to ensure that systems and algorithms are transparent
• Resilient: must portray resiliency towards censorship and ID deletion
• Portability: identities should be usable anywhere
• Control: to ensure that the holder controls their ID
• Persistent: to ensure that a holder’s current ID is taken away from them
• Consent: to ensure that the ID can be used only if the holder agrees to it
• Existence: to ensure the independent existence of the holder

Benefits of SSI

Self-sovereign Identities offer a slew of benefits ranging from full control to hassle-free verification. The benefits have been highlighted below. It helps users or holders achieve:

• Complete control over identities
• Access and update information with the help of third parties
• Choose to keep data private or public
• Transfer data (to another organization or jurisdiction, in case of relocation)
• Delete a part of an identity (if needed)
• Hassle-free authentication (or) verification process
• Efficient processing of data (for organizations)

Conclusion

SSI has various applications in multiple industries, which benefit both consumers and organizations. In all sectors, the background check and verification processes can be made efficient by adopting SSI. In the healthcare industry, credentialing patients and doctors will speed up all administrative processes. Similarly, in the BFSI industry, merchants or customers can be onboarded seamlessly without dependency on third parties. Adopting SSI can help organizations automate most of their administrative processes and save a significant amount of time and money.

In this direction, LTIMindtree has collaborated with Evernym and built an SSI platform termed “Digital Health Passport,” which enables travelers to carry their digital health data and proof of vaccination for hassle-free verification. To help our customers unlock value in their transformational journey and compete with industry leaders, the blockchain practice at LTIMindtree operates as an ecosystem of startup partners. We offer customized services to our clients at different maturity levels, ranging from use case identification, platform selection, due diligence, assessments, ROI roadmaps, etc. Please contact us to know more.