How do you solve this complex problem of verifying your identity while ensuring that only the minimal necessary information is revealed and the rest of your sensitive personal data remains securely protected?
Let’s look at a use case, where a university is taking a groundbreaking approach to verifying student identities with decentralized digital ID cards.
The challenges: Physical ID cards are overexposing personal data, vulnerable to misuse, and expensive
A university, which traditionally issues physical ID cards to students for identification, is looking to modernize its approach.
Physical cards have four main problems:
Overexposure of personal data: Physical ID cards makes it impossible to control what information is shared in each situation and forces people to share more personal data than necessary.
Lost ID card, lost control: These cards can be lost or stolen, putting sensitive personal information at risk. Once an ID falls into the wrong hands, all the data it contains becomes vulnerable to misuse.
Physical cards are costly: Producing and managing physical student ID cards involves expenses for materials, printing, and shipping. Whenever a card is lost or damaged, the university must issue a replacement, incurring further costs.
Exam cheating: Ensuring each student is who they claim to be during an exam can be difficult. Traditional ID cards can be passed around or forged, letting someone else take a test on a student’s behalf.
The university wants to solve these challenges by going fully digital and keeping student data as safe as possible.
Solution: Replacing physical ID cards with a digital identity wallet for sharing and verifying personal information without ever compromising privacy
As a solution, the university has decided to replace the traditional physical ID cards with a digital identity wallet that individuals can identify themselves with.
How it works
The university can issue students a digital credential that is held in a secure mobile wallet (or similar application). When students arrive for an exam, they simply use their digital wallet to prove their identity.
Preventing exam cheating with biometric identity hardware
To combat exam cheating, the student’s digital ID is paired with a facial recognition process. First, a reference photo is taken for when the student’s ID is issued. When the student arrives for an exam, they present their digital ID on their phone and the system takes a fresh photo, comparing it to the reference image.
This ensures the person holding the digital ID is the same individual registered in the system - making it much harder to share the ID with someone else who could take the exam.
Privacy is protected through selective data sharing
The solution ensures privacy by enabling selective data sharing: Only the necessary details are shared each time, instead of revealing all personal information. Sensitive data - like biometrics - is split and stored securely across multiple servers, making it far harder to hack. This combination of user control and distributed data storing keeps privacy intact at every step.
Key results: Users can access their personal data and carry private information in a fully protected way
More control over private data for the individual, greater security and lower costs: The university’s new decentralized digital ID solution has dramatically transformed and improved student verification. Here are the key outcomes and benefits:
Personal control over privacy: By shifting to a digital identity wallet, users can choose exactly which details to share, ensuring only the necessary information is shared on a need-to-know basis. Not every piece of personal data (like name, address, and date of birth) needs to be displayed, reducing unnecessary exposure of sensitive information.
Risk of identity misuse is lowered: Digital IDs eliminate the physical risk of losing or having a card stolen. If a student loses their phone or has it stolen, the digital ID can be remotely deactivated and restored on a new device. This prevents unauthorized access and significantly lowers the risk of identity misuse.
Costs are cut by going fully digital: Moving from physical to digital IDs cuts out printing, materials, and distribution costs. Replacing a lost or damaged digital ID is as simple as issuing a new credential in the student’s app - no extra expenses for printing or shipping.
Exam security is strengthened with biometric verification: The digital ID solution pairs with biometric checks to ensure that the individual taking the exam is the correct student. A face scan taken at exam time is matched to the student’s registered ID, greatly reducing the possibility of someone impersonating a student during tests.
Sensitive data is secured: By splitting sensitive information across multiple servers, the system makes hacking far more difficult. This decentralized distributed storage model keeps private data protected at every stage.
DID can help ensure the validity of the card: The university will be able to revoke a digital student card for students who interrupt their education.
The future is decentralized and focused on privacy
This groundbreaking solution tackles the challenge of confirming someone’s identity and sharing their data securely, without compromising their privacy.
With new regulations emerging every day, trust depends on protecting user data. Where are you in the privacy game?
