DID Alliance Brings Trust and Accountability to the Digital World with Launch of GADI, The Global Association for Digital Identity

GADI Enables User Control of Digital Identities and Personal Data

Santa Clara, CA - November 07, 2019 - GADI, The Global Association for Digital Identity, an initiative of the DID Alliance (didalliance.org), is the most secure way to protect businesses and users from data breaches. The first iteration of the GADI Specification system is expected by the end of 2020.

The DID Alliance launched in October 2019 as the managing body for the development and maintenance of new industry standards for decentralized identity. It is co-founded by Ramesh Kesanupalli, co-founder of the FIDO Alliance  (fidoalliance.org) and founder of Nok Nok Labs, and Soonhyung Lee, founder and CEO of Raonsecure. DID Alliance founding members include: Badge Inc., CLEAR, ClearFoundation, Digital Trust, FEITIAN, Identity.com,  KFTC, LG CNS, MobileIron, NH Bank, Nok Nok Labs, Onfido, Raonsecure, Samsung SDS, Sensory, Shinhan Bank, and Sovrin Foundation.
 

"GADI will assure trustable, authorized identity for every individual on the globe, whether online or in physical world applications,” says DID Alliance co-founder Ramesh Kesanupalli. “We will enable a new Internet where every user identity is unique, authentic, and secure.”

“We want to empower a global DID ecosystem to overcome the limits of centralized services as well as problems of independent identity systems,” said Soonhyung Lee, DID Alliance co-founder and CEO of Raonsecure. “The DID Alliance, through GADI technology, will connect human identity to digital identity. Its international, collaborative network of global partners is focused on solving problems including data and privacy breaches, while also looking to remove fundamental identity issues that prevent access to basic rights.”

“The primary inhibitor to enabling consistently secure access controls is the exponentially increasing complexity of disparate identity services. GADI offers the greatest potential for unifying all user identities in order to eliminate end user friction while accelerating security assurance,“ said Research Director Steve Brasen, for the analyst firm Enterprise Management Associates [Report: Passwordless Authentication: Bridging the Gap Between High-Security and Low-Friction Identity Management]

Individuals often relinquish control of identity and personal identifying information (PII) to centralized databases that are managed by companies and institutions we deal with every day.  This does not allow individuals to control their online identities. Decentralized identity systems disrupt this existing model and would be able to restore exclusive and local control of identity and PII, while limiting risk of fraud, identity theft, and increasing privacy.  It does this while strictly maintaining credential issuers’ standards of trust and accountability.

The GADI approach ensures verifiable digital identities for each individual, including the 25 percent of people on earth today who have no identifying credentials. No one is excluded, because a Digital Address issued in the GADI system allows a user to privately determine the factors that will identify the individual for life. With unmatched user choice and determination over what factors comprise one’s individual identity, GADI immediately limits - and eventually eliminates - the validity of common (often compromised) identifiers that have been used in the past.

ABOUT DID ALLIANCE (didalliance.org) 

The DID Alliance is a global organization dedicated to developing and maintaining the new standards for decentralized identity.  GADI is one of the key next generation solutions of decentralized identity which strongly and uniquely binds an online ID to its owner, allowing identity owners to control their own personal information and its presentation and use online (as well as offline). The DID Alliance was co-founded by Ramesh Kesanupalli and Soonhyung Lee. 

DID Alliance - Partner Quotes:

Badge Inc.

“Badge supports the important goal of providing access to identity for all and binding digital identity to people. As recognized by the DID Alliance founders, Badge technology is key to the creation and management of a secure identity ecosystem.” – Kyle Kilcoyne, Business Development, Badge Inc.

CLEAR

“Identity is foundational to virtually every aspect of our lives, and privacy and data security are at the center of everything we do at CLEAR. We look forward to working with the DID alliance to ensure future identity standards provide the highest security for our customers and put the needs of users first.” – Mike Antico, Chief Information Security Officer & Chief Security Officer, CLEAR. clearme.com

ClearFoundation

"For far too long proving one's identity has been a nearly unsolvable problem for the most marginalized people among us living in remote, underprivileged, or underserved regions of the globe. At ClearFoundation, we are leveraging our decade's worth of past experience in Digital Security, Decentralized Identification and Decentralized Storage to provide a new class of solutions to help address the most pressing tech challenges of today including the first phone, ClearPHONE, with digital identity built into the operating system. Now as part of the DID Alliance, together we can provide even greater solutions for all of humanity that significantly lower the threshold for adoption for anyone needing a digital identity.” – Michael Proper, ClearFoundation Chairman. clearfoundation.co.nz

Identity.com

“The decentralized identity community is overdue for a bigger voice within the identity community. The DID Alliance gives us more power to achieve our collective goal to make identity safer and easier for the public.” – Phillip Shoemaker, Executive Director, Identity.com.

KFTC

“South Korea has enacted the Digital Signature Act which aims to encourage innovation in authentication. We are preparing for the rapid adoption of DID for financial services to improve user experience. We expect the global standardization established by DID Alliance will facilitate financial payments for everyone.” – Sung Chunkyeong, General Manager of Advanced Authentication Department of Korea Financial Telecommunications & Clearing Institute.

MobileIron

“The future of identity belongs to the users themselves – where individuals own and control their own identity, and therefore are able to bring their identity with them into the workplace. Organizations like the DID Alliance are fundamental to making self-sovereign identity a reality, and MobileIron is eager to help bring self-sovereign identity to the workplace.” –Suresh Batchu, Chief Technology Officer, Co-founder, MobileIron.

Nok Nok Labs

“Protecting individual personal privacy and data security in the digital world must be addressed with the cooperation of individuals, and commercial and government organizations.  A bold new approach is what is needed to bring these key constituents together — in the same way this path was followed 6 years ago to develop stronger and easier to use authentication standards from the FIDO Alliance.  If anyone has the experience and vision to be successful at such an undertaking, it is Ramesh.  We look forward to working with him to help build the framework of the Global Association for Digital Identity.” – Phillip M. Dunkelberger, President & CEO Nok Nok Labs.

Onfido

“We have joined the Global Association for Digital Identity to help bring identity from the physical to the digital world. We share the group's vision of building a global framework where individuals have a unique digital identity, to enable more trust and security for people and provide them the ability to control their digital identity." – Husayn Kassai, CEO and Co-founder, Onfido.