Making Data Better

Credential sharing is complex and exciting. Take a listen to our guest, Dan Stemp from JNCTN, in this installment of Making Data Better. We discuss JNCTN's credential sharing platform and its major use cases. 

Discover how managing digital identities supports the work of critical industries, from power generation to healthcare. We unpack the intricate relationships between those who rely on credentials, the individuals who hold them, and the authorities who issue them. 

Dan tells us the story of his firm's evolution from card personalization bureau to today's digital credential management scheme. We discuss the firm's clients' transition from physical tokens to digital credential presentation. Of course, we discuss wallets because they are the natural containers to hold verifiable credentials and we address  JNCTN's proprietary approaches, the W3C, and big players like Apple and Google. 

Implementation of systemic systems is never easy. JNCTN has multiple stakeholders to convince. We examine enterprise adoption and the leverage points that resonate with the relyingn parties, the risk owners, who deploy these systems. It's not just about risk mitigation and operational efficiency.

So, take a listen as Dan, Steve, and George share their enthusiasm for verifiable credential sharing and the breadth of applications ahead.

Ever wondered about government's role in online identification and how it could expand to help our digital economy function better and safer? Or how government data quality directly impacts risk assessment?

In this episode of Making Data Better, we tackle where US and Australian governments stand on protecting our digital IDs and personal credentials.

Join us as Jeremy Grant, Managing Director of Technology Business Strategy at Venable LLP, brings his insights on security technology strategy, policy, finance, and more to Making Data Better.  Jeremy speaks to his decades-long experience with US federal and state government initiatives. And to the work of his organization, the Better Identity Coalition (check out its policy papers for federal and state-level policymakers!)

Government issues the credentials we rely on to prove who we are. Regulating how those credentials may be protected to enjoy expanded usage is both necessary and fraught with complications. Tech regulation has a history of being well behind technology's evolution.

That said, it is coherent policy and political direction that is needed. Disparate agencies may fully understand the potential of the assets they manage but without strategic focus at the highest level, the challenge of digital ID will remain. And our exposure to fraudsters, synthetic identities, and nation-state attacks will continue.

This is no small matter. FINCEN, the Treasury Department's Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, recently announced their analysis of bank-filed suspicious activity reports. They found that $212 billion of transactions were tied to compromised identity. The General Accounting Office, the investigative arm of the US Congress, estimated between $100 and $135 billion losses in public benefits fraud during the pandemic.

This is real money, ending up in the hands of organized criminals and adversarial nation-states.

So, take a listen to this episode with Jeremy Grant and Lockstep's Steve Wilson and George Peabody. There's work to be done.

In October 2008 Heartland Payment Systems discovered it had been breached. Albert Gonzalez and several other individuals hacked their way through an external company website using SQL injection — an attack that too often still works — to the core of Heartland’s systems. They were able to copy credit and debit card numbers and other data used in payment authorization.

At the time, that data enabled those who bought it to create new magstripe cards.

Some stats about the hack:

• Heartland’s stock price fell by 77% in the months following the attack.
• Some 130 million card numbers were exposed.
• Heartland paid $60 million in fines to Visa, over $40M to Mastercard, $5M to Discover, and $3.6M to AMEX.
• The business of signing up merchants to accept cards using Heartland’s services took a big hit.

To me, this is also something of a hero story. Because Heartland’s leadership, led by CEO Bob Carr, got angry. Yes, at the hackers. But more important they took that anger and frustration and used it to fill a gaping hole in card system security, way out in front of what the card systems themselves required.

I was fortunate enough to play a minor part in Heartland’s response. As an analyst, I got to know some key players who will tell their part of the story in this episode.

Self-sovereign identity, digital wallets, risk management, federated identity, and a recap of the Identiverse 2023 conference are among the topics discussed in this episode of Making Data Better. George and Steve complete their landscape view of data quality and security.

Identiverse 2023 reflected those topics, indicating a shift toward digital wallets, passkeys, and verifiable credentials as essential components of a resilient digital ecosystem. We discuss these and what's not being addressed to date.

So take a listen as we set the table for Making Data Better and begin our series. We will speak to practitioners of the latest in data protection, tell the stories of data quality initiatives that have succeeded—and failed—and regularly rise above the weeds to provide perspective.

With so many moving parts and so many changes, Making Data Better keeps it all in context. 

Online trust? Digital identification? Wallets? Privacy? Data quality? If these topics resonate, join Lockstep's George Peabody and Steve Wilson in this, the first episode of Making Data Better, a podcast about data quality and the impact it has on how we protect, manage, and use the digital data critical to our lives.

We focus on making data better because data quality has everything to do with making good decisions. We introduce the critical and complex concerns that affect online trust and risk management.

One area where this really applies is in assessing risk. We believe data quality has an outsized impact on risk management. From relatively trivial decisions about where to go out to eat, to opening new bank accounts and sending money cross-border, each carries risk. Do we trust the data? Does it let us know who or what is on the other end of our digital interaction?

There are so many moving parts to understand, evaluate, and discuss. We’ll unpack all this with experts from fintech, cyber, healthcare, government services, and academia. 

So take a listen and join us on this journey.

Making Data Better is a podcast about data quality and the impact it has on how we protect, manage and use the digital data critical to our lives. Take a listen to this intro. We're launching the first episodes in June 2023.