What are Self-Sovereign Identities?

Introduction

Modern businesses swiftly put their best foot forward in adopting digital identities to transform their business. And innovative ways to securely leverage digital identities are undoubtedly paving the way for overall business success.

However, with the rapid adoption of identity management solutions, a new concept of self-sovereign identity (SSI) is hot news in the identity and access management landscape.

What is Self-Sovereign Identity?

Self-sovereign identity controls users' credentials, attributes, and data sets. And they could decide which attributes they wish to present to verify their identity for the requested services.

Nowadays, there is a wide range of definitions using words like “Credential Sharing” or “Decentralized Credentials,” which all mean more or less the same thing – having more control and awareness over our identity instead of relying merely on third parties.

Today we take a look at what self-sovereign identity is. And although it's easy to get confused with all the buzzwords floating around, incredibly, when many of them are hyped in the media, self-sovereign identity is an essential concept in the evolving landscape of digital identities.

Let's dive into it and figure out how it will shape the future of online data transactions.

How is Self-Sovereign Identity Addressing Current Digital Identity Challenges?

Since self-sovereign identities (SSIs) are managed and decentralized, users can self-manage their digital identities without relying on third-party providers that store and manage data centrally.

Self-sovereign identities are a new way of managing your identity and data. In traditional systems, business data and certificates are stored centrally and retrieved between partners as required. This centralized approach is not only inefficient but can be costly as well.

Self-sovereign identities maintain privacy by controlling your personal information and data. They also allow for efficiency in data exchange, resulting in more cost-effective operations.

Finally, SSI complies with global data regulations and standards by allowing for the use of digital signatures on documents which keep them secure from tampering or theft of identity.

The aim is to create an ecosystem for individuals to manage their data, which allows them to choose who can access it and under what circumstances. It also allows them to revoke access if necessary.

Benefits of Incorporating Self-Sovereign Identities

Self-sovereign identities are a revolutionary way to bring control and security back to individuals. Instead of storing their information in a central location, users can create an identity that only contains the information they want others to see.

Self-sovereign identities eliminate the effort of collecting documentation that has already been collected elsewhere and the risk of losing or misplacing that documentation. Users deliver only the information they approve validators to receive, so they don't need to carry around copies of everything in their wallets!

The process also establishes a cryptographically secure ledger recording transactions that cannot be modified. This makes it nearly impossible for someone else to access your information without your permission.

Here’s the list of other benefits that a business gets with SSI:

• Reduce the need for centralized databases to the minimum (e.g., for regulatory purposes) and provide clients complete control and possession over their non-public information.
• Reduce vulnerability to information misuse via the ones charged with coping with it and to cyberattacks, fraud, and different monetary crimes.
• Give extra comfort to clients by putting off passwords for login and continuous authentication.
• Generate remarkable degrees of human acceptance as accurate among the corporation, its customers, and companions.
• Reduce the compliance burden of dealing with clients' private information in services.
• Allow participation in open, trustworthy, interoperable standards.
• Enable interesting new enterprise alliances inside which companions can talk and trade records securely to supply services (e.g., in scientific or education).

To Conclude

The Internet Identity Ecosystem is disrupting the highly centralized paradigm of managing identity. It offers a systematic and decentralized approach to identity management using SSI.

Self-sovereign identities are changing the way we interact online. Businesses are taking advantage of the security and transparency offered by this new paradigm to streamline their operations, reduce fraud, and rebuild customer trust.