Microsoft is using Blockchain to secure your digital identity

According to Statista, 197 billion apps were downloaded in 2017 and all have complete access to user identities; Microsoft’s Blockchain-based platform will give users control over sensitive information.

Microsoft has unveiled a Blockchain platform to secure, store and manage identities, as an experiment on the Microsoft Authenticator App, which was released 18 months ago. Microsoft will collaborate on an open source, self-sovereign, Blockchain-based identity system that allows people, products, apps, and services to interoperate across Blockchains, cloud providers, and organisations.

Microsoft says the technology will give power to the people in an era where they are granting consent to several apps and services. The Blockchain technology protects their identity data, which is spread across multiple providers. When the data is being used or looked into, the authenticator app throws in blocks, which have to be verified by the original party that shared data. Only when the block is authenticated will the data be released to the party trying to access it.

People don’t have control over their identities and are mostly subject to harassment when data is compromised or when apps snoop into their data after the customer has downloaded them.

Microsoft has been incubating ideas for using Blockchain and other distributed ledger technologies to create new types of decentralised digital identities.

Microsoft championed this along with the ID2020 Alliance, a global public-private partnership dedicated to aiding the 1.1 billion people around the world who lack any legal form of identity. Microsoft claims to be inspired it.

The tech giant shared that it was deepening its commitment to the issue of security, by formally joining ID2020 as a founding member. The company donated $1 million, and committed resources and expertise to further develop a secure, portable form of digital identity, and help implement it across governments and agencies.

Microsoft will lend the technical expertise of its identity team to provide guidance as the project scales, empowering people with direct consent over who has access to their personal information, and when to release and share data.