A Platform for Federated Digital Identity Management
The consortium working on the platform includes research organizations such as FBK and TNO, and businesses in the ICT industry such as ATOS and the Italian postal services provider Poste Italiane.
The platform developed by FIDES aims to ensure the safe use of digital (and non digital) services using the users’ digital identities.
Digital identity
Digital identity is the set of attributes that a natural or a legal person has in a given domain. A person can have multiple digital identities in different services such as social networks, e-commerce or online banking websites. Managing this multiplicity is very complex for users and can significantly increase security risks such as identity theft or privacy breaches.
The FIDES platform
The FIDES platform was developed with the goal of creating an ecosystem that would help people use their digital identities to benefit, in a secure (trusted) manner, from digital (and non-digital) services. The ecosystem created by FIDES encompasses various areas allowing the cross-border (at the European level) use of different devices such as smartphones, tablets, laptops and desktops having significant differences with respect to security mechanisms to access a variety of services such as healthcare “without borders”.
End users are not the only ones who benefit from FIDES; also service providers do as they no longer need to manage the identities of their user base (with the commitment of technical and monetary resources this entails), but they can just “consume” those conveyed by the platform. This frees up valuable resources that can be used to develop both digital and “physical” innovative services as those experimented with in the project, namely a Personal Health Record system and the use of smartphones as smart keys.
The contribution of Fondazione Bruno Kessler
Fondazione Bruno Kessler with the Security & Trust (S&T) Research Unit (http://st.fbk.eu) contributed to the design of the platform architecture and the definition of a secure solution enabling users to access the FIDES platform through mobile devices. Given the growing use of mobile devices (especially smartphones) to access digital resources, and the ability to connect with other devices (such as those for eHealth and wellness), the mobile solution for digital identity management developed by S&T plays a vital role in the development of innovative services, contributing both to the creation of the European Single Market for digital services and to achieve fundamental rights for European citizens such as “cross-border” care in Europe.
“Security & Trust” (S&T) Unit – FBK
The “Security & Trust” Research Unit at Fondazione Bruno Kessler designs and develops innovative security techniques in the following areas: (multi-factor and multi-channel) authentication and authorization protocols using browsers or mobile applications; automated analysis of security and privacy risks of mobile device applications;
techniques for the automated analysis and enforcement of access control policies for the cloud.
The S&T Unit participates in several international research projects, including a European Industrial Doctorate on Security and Trust of Next Generation Enterprise Information Systems (SECENTIS) in collaboration with SAP funded by the European Union, and plays a key role in the activities of Poste Italiane’s ICT Security Innovation Lab in Trento.
Contact:
Silvio Ranise – Unit Head