Why Self Sovereign Identity is important - CIO brief

Identity on the internet has been missing since the beginning. For all the amazing ways in which the internet has come to enhance our daily business, social, and personal lives, it was originally designed to simply connect digital endpoints. Networking protocols were built so that computers could identify one another, prove themselves, and safely establish a flow of bits between them. What those bits represent was never a primary concern of the architecture. Despite this limitation, for nearly 3 decades we have been creatively injecting the human narrative into the digital conversation between computers; all the while struggling with the lack of certainty about who the human is who is initiating the process.

Self-Sovereign Identity (SSI) and Verifiable Credentials (VCs) have emerged as a way to address the question: “Who is really behind the other end of my digital interaction?” Together, the pair of technologies are able to do this at scale while enhancing personal privacy, increasing trust between parties, and promoting practical models of anonymity in a world where all too often our identity becomes a commercial commodity.

This presentation is for people who are thinking about how identity and trust relate to their employees, customers, partners, and competitors, and the bespoke way in which we are forced to deal with the issue. Those looking for a better understanding of the benefits afforded by SSI and VCs as well as the technical and governance underpinnings required to support solutions should attend.

Steve Magennis is a former Senior Director with Avanade and has worked closely with Accenture and Microsoft over the years to develop transformational initiatives for many Fortune 100 enterprise clients. Decentralized design is a key focus of his as it enables creating entirely new classes of solutions that can be applied to persistent, entrenched business and social problems.