As the digital ecosystem rapidly grows in complexity – and sheer size – so too do the platforms, business models and consumer behaviours which underpin it. This is, broadly, a wonderful thing – the ingenuity of the digital age is reaching more people than ever before, and service providers are adapting to find ever more ways of making that happen. What this also means, however, is that there are ever more ways for hackers to make their way into the equation, and as the digital landscape becomes more various and sophisticated, so to do the methods used by cybercriminals. To maintain the critical mass of user confidence needed for the mobile industry’s increasingly central role in delivering digital services to business, governments and the consumer places operators in a position of unprecedented opportunity to combat identity fraud and online theft. Indeed, this is both a commercial and an ethical imperative for the industry.
The GSMA’s Identity Programme is at MWC19 Los Angeles next week to support operators in this vital work. Top of the agenda will be our Identity Seminar, at 15:30 on Tuesday 22 October, in Room 408B, Concourse Hall, at the Los Angeles Conference Centre. This year we’ll be giving in-depth consideration to the matter which ultimately decides all others: how can digital identity solutions be made economical for those seeking to provide them? Aimed at operators and the wider digital services community, From Risk Scoring to Blockchain: Analysing Revenue Streams in Digital Identity will showcase the growth of digital identity services around the globe, but and with particular focus on developments in the US market. Key to these developments is recognition of the growing intrinsic need for identity technology across all digital platforms, to better protect both businesses and consumers from fraudulent use: enterprises of all kinds are increasingly alive to the need for security by default in this hyperconnected age, if their businesses are to thrive through the user confidence on which they increasingly rely.
Head of Identity at the GSMA Richard Cockle will provide a few words of introduction, setting the scene for those in the audience who may be considering a move into this space but are not yet fully up to speed on the context. Assistant Vice President at AT&T Johannes Jaskolski will then take attendees through the commercial opportunities opened up by ZenKey – a laudable move by the big four US operators to join forces on digital identity, of which Mr Jaskolski is General Manager – focusing on how the US operators are taking on fraud in the mobile identity arena.
We’ll then move on to the prospects for monetising by-products of the mobile industry’s core offerings, by putting them to good use in the fight to secure users and businesses in this increasingly complex digital landscape. Head of Data Science at Organon Analytics Emrah Anayurt will explain how risk scores can be generated from operator data using advanced machine learning, and then Head of Business Development at Callsign Ryan Gosling will then set out how adaptive authentication too can be achieved by using insights from such data. If responsive and dynamic solutions can be developed using datasets the industry already produces as a matter of course, we’re already much of the way there – but we do need to share learnings on common challenges to get these innovations over the line and into mass deployment.
It’s also increasingly apparent that operators have an important role to play in the delivery of more user-centric, decentralised identity solutions, as methods emerge of avoiding some of the risks and inefficiencies associated with enormous centralised databases. Dr. Kang-Won Lee, Senior Vice President and Head of Cloud Labs at SK Telecom will provide insights into how operators can drive this process if they work together, with detail on some of the commercial use cases, and Principal Program Manager at Microsoft Nasos Kladakis will be there to clarify the world of decentralised identities for those who may be interested but as yet uncertain as to quite how this all works.
It’s an important time for digital identity in the world of mobile tech, and there are opportunities out there for those who wish to broaden their commercial horizons while also making a contribution to the wider benefit of society. To be part of that story, and contribute to these early discussions which will shape it, please register your interest here.