Digital Identity

We use our identity every day, whether it’s greeting someone we know at the office or speaking with people on the phone who recognize our voice. These acts are so seamless and natural that we may not even realize we are using our identity to be recognized by others. But we often need to identify ourselves to people who don’t know us, in person and over the phone. And we need to identify ourselves on social media and to our banking app. So we have usernames and passwords, and account numbers and secret words to prove to customer service representatives that we’re the actual account owner.

Imagine if your identity was loaded onto your smartphone. You now have a new way to identify yourself and interact with the world around you, online, on the phone, and in person.

Using smartphone technology, it is now possible to log into computer systems without the need to remember passwords. It’s possible to unlock doors to offices without the need for keycards. We can readily identify ourselves to other people on the phone or in person without the need to show physical forms of identification or remember secret words or complicated passwords. The element of convenience is only one of many benefits of unified mobile identity. The approach renders previous security vulnerabilities obsolete: there is no risk of losing a key. The likelihood that your password can be hacked is zero. You don’t have to remember precise answers to security questions such as where you met your spouse or the name of your first pet.

PostNL uses this identity smartphone technology for their parcel delivery process which helps them to plan routes for parcel delivery. Based off of use cases by Bike Logistics and PostNL's Parcel Machines, they researched safe, easy, and personalized digital access to vehicles, machines, and buildings for employees and/or contractors for these complex processes. During this session John will deep dive into the collaboration between MicroStrategy and PostNL that resulted in a Proof of Concept in 2018. These two use cases are valuable for PostNL in the near future: they provide interesting security insights and creates a new holistic dimension to the delivery process of PostNL.

This lecture is made possible by MicroStrategy.