Kantara issued $2.4M in grants to develop digital ID and privacy solutions using smartphones

Kantara Initiative has received multiple research grants of up to $2.4 million, which it will use to develop three innovative digital identity and privacy solutions using smartphones including mobile device attribute verification, mobile authentication and physical access control.
Lockstep Technologies, Gluu Inc. and Exponent Inc. are also working on the projects with Kantara and the Command, Control and Interoperability Center for Advanced Data Analysis (CCICADA), a research center at the Rutgers University funded by the US Department of Homeland Security Science & Technology Directorate.

The multi-phased projects are the first to be launched by the Kantara Identity and Privacy Incubator Program (KIPI).

“Each of these projects being delivered under KIPI are pioneering new areas in digital identity, privacy and access control,” said Colin Wallis, executive director of Kantara Initiative. “The basis for each project is a unique re-configuration of emerging next generation standards and specifications delivered through mobile devices, like smartphones. The trend of leveraging the ubiquitous mobile device for digital identity solution continues to ramp worldwide. We are seeing a growing interest in incubator programs like KIPI.”

Lockstep Technologies’ Mobile Device Attribute Verification (MDAV) is designed to deliver secure digitally-signed attributes on smartphones, verifying the attributes, sources and devices through the recasting of digital certificate policy.

Potential applications for the technology include credentials for first responders, mobile driver’s licenses, anonymous proof of age, clinical trial and e-health record confidentiality, electronic travel documentation, and privacy-enhanced national IDs.

Gluu’s Emergency Responder Authentication System for Mobile UserS (ERASMUS) pilot project will demonstrate how the services of an identity federation can provide the tools and regulations required to facilitate distributed identity management.

The pilot will also provide the first implementation of a new Kantara standard under development called the Open Trust Taxonomy for Federation Operators (OTTO).

An advanced federated identity infrastructure has several applications, including emergency response management collaboration tools, next generation mobile services, and computer aided dispatch.

The pilot will reveal a mobile application that will show how such an infrastructure could be used for in person identity and skills verification.

Finally, Exponent’s project will leverage the Opacity protocol to rapidly establish encrypted communications and authenticate a holder of a derived credential in a few seconds for full cryptographic authentication, or under a half a second for lower-security applications such as transit.

In addition, Exponent extended the authentication process for full-secrecy, privacy enhanced phone-to-phone identity authentication over NFC.

The project’s source code is available as a royalty-free open source download at GitHub.

Article Topics

access control  |  biometrics  |  digital identity  |  identity management  |  privacy  |  smartphones