Episode 30: “Identity Validation and Security in a Socially-Distanced World” with Brian Nimmo, Senior Vice President of Sales and Marketing at ID DataWeb

Identity Validation: “Are the people logging into your website portals and communicating with you really who they say they are? For example, when you're buying a life insurance policy, you typically have a broker relationship. There are times where you want an in-person consultation, or the broker has a legal requirement to physically meet you. Well, that's now gone away. You now have to verify they are the person you think you're talking to, and that they aren’t coming in from the dark web and trying to take on the persona of someone else. The models have completely changed, and now companies are trying to adapt. Plus, some organizations have never had a remote workforce before; they never envisioned it. Today it's demanded. Again, you need to verify people’s identities, even employees.”

Changing Business Methods: “For our financial institution clients, we’ve seen that fraud is not going away just because we're all faced with this epidemic. This is exactly the time when the door is cracked. You have hackers or fraudsters coming into the organization thinking that people may not be there to watch what they need to watch. We triangulate the various identification methods using biometrics, government-issued IDs, and a host of other methods that include knowledge-based assertions. You need to tie them together.”

Forever Different: “We can lock down our organizations as tight as we want and say, ‘Nobody can come in’, but if you lock down your organization to the degree that you can't even get the people who want to subscribe to your service in, that's not a good business method. You have to have balance and harmonization in making those decisions between, ‘How much security do I want and how much prevention do I want? How do I still deliver a good customer experience at the end of the day?’ That's really what it's all about; you want to maintain those relationships. So, will things change? Absolutely. Will we have to innovate on ways to make the customer experience even better than it's been today? Absolutely. Innovation is happening everywhere as a result of this situation, and I think you're going to see the same thing in businesses practices.”

Virtually Connected: “Let’s go back to a year ago and look at telemedicine. Getting accredited by the proper government bodies within the state or local governments or dealing with doctors being accredited and certified to being able to work across state lines was a painful process. In fact, that's part of the reason why you didn't see telemedicine. We now have it. It's here and it's in full force, making the identity component of telemedicine critical – and it’s not just because you need to know that you're dealing with the patient and the patient is dealing with the doctor. That's fundamental. It’s also verifying that doctor is accredited in the state they are practicing in and they have the necessary certifications. We do that verification as well – all within 300 milliseconds. So, are things going to change as a result of this? We're going to see transformation take place – whether we wanted it or not. It’s going to have to happen.”

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