Whether it’s building roads or optimizing power supplies, investing in infrastructure is vital to the safety and efficiency of nations and organizations. And in today’s digital age, this investment must extend to establishing trusted identities for all. Identity is foundational for a robust public infrastructure, initiating substantial economic growth – like using driver’s licenses to access bars or drive to restaurants, or passports to travel and fuel tourism. Developments in biometrics have made it possible for IDs to cross the physical realm and even replace passwords as people can now use their biometric data, like fingerprints or facial scans, for self-verification.  

One way of transforming infrastructure is by integrating identity as a trusted, reliable means of accessing and benefiting from these services. In our interconnected world, identity has a dual function of serving credentials and empowering individuals in the real and digital realms. During authentication, our personal information is largely used to verify our identity, but it can be used for other purposes, like for managing services or detecting fraud.

Despite our many technological advancements, there are still 850 million people across the globe who lack secure means to prove their identity. Not only does this impact their ability to access basic social benefits, like education or health care, but it also makes them vulnerable to potential threats like identity theft or fraud, raising skepticism over the trustworthiness of the identification process for both the consumer and authenticating company involved, and subsequently hindering efforts to grow public infrastructure.

The audience for data theft is widespread. Cybercriminals, from inside offenders to third-party hackers, can steal digital identities through multiple means, including email phishing, password guessing using AI assistance, malware, deepfake technology – the options are growing every day, particularly as AI and Machine Learning become more streamlined across industrial operations. According to the 2024 Thales Data Threat Report, malware stands out as the fastest-growing threat of 2024, with 41% of enterprises witnessing a malware attack in the past year, closely followed by phishing and ransomware. Attackers are leveraging these methods to access data and blackmail individuals or disrupt, even cripple, organizations.

But this doesn’t have to be the end of digital identity, nor of its role in making up and driving infrastructure. In an ideal world, IDs should foster trust for both users and organizations/service providers. Mutual trust can be achieved by approaching digital IDs with consistent transparency, ease of user understanding, optimal security, and ethical compliance. While security is never 100% guaranteed, there are some best practices and resources that can help mitigate the threat posed to digital IDs, and in the process, to infrastructural integrity and advancement.

Establishing Password Protection, Including Multi-Factor Authentication

Your birthday or “1-2-3-4-5” don’t make the cut for secure passwords. Effective password protection depends on setting complex, varying passwords for most, if not each, user account we have online. For employees, this can apply to their shared organization files and folders containing sensitive client or company data. It’s also important to regularly change our passwords so they can’t be guessed by hackers over time and become susceptible to breach. 

Multi-factor authentication, or MFA, doubles password security by requiring additional verification information, such as a one-time passcode (OTP). However, MFA adoption has been a common barrier to ensuring security, as many users find it cumbersome and choose to bypass it, presuming their data is safe from harm – until, of course, it isn’t.

Going Passwordless with Biometric Verification

Biometrics is being increasingly normalized across organizations and social/government services. With advancements in biometric technology, users are enjoying the benefits of better speed and more convenience for a seamless user experience. Whether it’s to validate a payment, create an online account for making purchases, or access a building, biometrics are playing a key role in embedding the role of identity into infrastructure.

As biometrics become deployed across industries around the world, it is important for the organizations developing and using the technology to establish cross-biometric criteria. For instance, aligning biometric technology with rising data regulations set by, say, the GDPR, or ethical standards to prevent discrimination. Biometrics also needs to have shared transparency rules between the manufacturer, its partners, suppliers, and customers to maintain awareness and keep data-sharing consensual. Finally, it’s imperative that the users understand exactly how their biometric data is used and are reassured their individual freedoms are being respected. It’s only with user trust that we can expect ‘biometric transactions’ to continue, paving the way for a passwordless future.

Deploying Security Software and Ensuring Continuous Updates

We know the risks of driving without seatbelts. Think of skipping on security software like skipping on wearing a seatbelt – sure, we may save a couple of minutes and avoid the inconvenience of applying it, but the ramifications can be severe, even life-threatening (or in this case, identity data threatening). 

Whether an everyday user or an organization, it’s important to protect the personal data we are responsible for and implement security software meant to protect data from potential threats. Equally important is the need to continuously update our software. Our data is at stake, and by maintaining regular updates, we are ensuring your software is set up with the latest tools to counter new risks. Failure to update will make our system dated and expose our personal identification data to all sorts of new threats.

Avoiding Oversharing

This is a simple rule to state but a harder one to follow. A lot of people unknowingly expose themselves to risk from what they post online, particularly on social media, like birthdays and pet names. Hackers can use this information to answer common security questions and hack into user accounts. It’s gotten to the point that parents posting gushing photos of their newborn children, along with their date of birth, are unwillingly exposing their kids to potential identity theft.

Part of the problem stems from a lack of transparency of the platforms that allow third-party data use, or in many cases, too much transparency in the form of long, complex statements that make it harder for users to know what they’re agreeing to. Although data protection policies are underway, they are far from established, and the onus is on the user to avoid oversharing or clicking on random quizzes, to update their account privacy settings, and at best, to not post anything sensitive in the first place.

Navigating the Future of Identity as Infrastructure

As digital identity becomes integral to our daily lives, those going without will quickly find (if they haven’t already) that accessing basic services without ID will become a challenge. Growing cases of identity theft/fraud will only exacerbate the circumstances. Nowadays, any risk to our digital identity is a threat to our personal, social, work, and financial data. It can threaten our livelihood, put our friends and family in danger of cyberattacks, and even put our employer at risk. Ultimately, it can hurt our infrastructure and socioeconomic future.

Whether its password or passwordless, less sharing or more security software, users and organizations must embrace some, if not all, of these best practices if they wish to enjoy the benefits of seamless access and experience that comes with owning a digital identity. We should also create greater awareness of the larger risk that comes from unsafe identities and how, like a domino effect, if a few get affected, very soon it could cause our public and private infrastructure to get knocked down.