You might remember the 1993 New Yorker cartoon, where a dog at a computer says to the other, “On the Internet, no one knows you’re a dog.” Decades later, that problem is about to be solved for credit unions and their members. While some websites may not care if their visitors are dogs, credit unions need a high level of confidence that their members are who they say they are in each and every interaction. Digital service is fraught with opportunities for an attacker to successfully impersonate someone in all remote channels, especially in the call center.
The problem that we experience every day is the disconnected nature of trust in our digital life. How do we trust that the member your credit union is interacting with is really who he claims to be?
In contrast to the physical world, the internet does not have an identity built into it. How do we prove who we are in the digital world? Much of our personal information is stored in centralized databases waiting for fraudsters to steal and sell on the dark web, causing fraud and identity theft for your members.
Credit unions deal with verifiable credentials, like driver’s licenses, passports, proof of address, and the like. With a MemberPass™ digital identity, the basic interaction for trust involves a three-legged, or three-party interaction. The holder of the credential, or the member, is given the digital ID by the issuer (credit union). The holder owns and controls their personal information and presents the digital ID to the verifier (requestor). The holder needs the verifier to trust them because the issuer has vetted them and issued a digital ID. With MemberPass™, the credit union vouches on behalf of the member that the information the verifier receives is trustworthy.
A source of truth that supports the three interacting parties in the MemberPass™ ecosystem is the Digital Trust Registry, which provides credential integrity protection. When a credit union joins the Digital Trust Registry, CULedger creates a public decentralized identifier (DID) that is written to the Sovrin Global Identity Network, which is a global distributed ledger designed exclusively to support digital trust networks and verifiable digital credentials.
As a participant of the Digital Trust Registry, other credit unions in the MemberPass™ ecosystem will know whether a credit union is registered as an issuing credit union which prevents spoofing. Lastly, once ready, a credit union will have priority implementation status when it’s ready to issue MemberPass™ to its members.
Taking the first step toward creating digital trust between your credit unions and your members is easy. All it takes for credit unions to participate is six pieces of credit union information and $2,500. CULedger does the rest in establishing the credit union in the Digital Trust Registry. Visit www.digitaltrustregistry.com and start today!
CULedger, a credit union service organization, offering MemberPass™, the simplest, most secure solution to verify your members through leveraging touchless, privacy-enhancing technology to protect credit unions and their members from identity theft and fraud.
