This startup says COVID-19 catapulted the need for digital trust over the Internet

Trust: A factor that must permeate through all the layers starting from the first phase of the service by the provider to the last phase until it reaches the end-user. Without any denial that trust factor has become the benchmark of services provided over digital platforms. Over the digital plane, the Internet, therefore, sets an overwhelming need for trust. 

Trust is truly the central principle of the global digital economy

“With the Internet, knowing who sits behind the screen is hard today. It is fair to say that today's Internet, absents a native identity layer. The Internet was built without a way to know who and what you are connecting to. This limits what we can do with it and exposes us to growing dangers, especially phishing attacks. Individual consumers are tricked into releasing banking and other information through phishing schemes that take advantage of their inability to tell who they are dealing with,” opens up Satish Mohan, Founder and CTO of Bengaluru-based startup Dhiway with a fact on the Internet and its association with digital security.

Dhiway is a startup best known for its services on Verifiable Data Exchange (VDX) – a platform delivering authenticity across institutional boundaries. Satish Mohan and his team at Dhiway are constantly working with a vision to make the world more transparent and trusted, using digital frameworks that can be universally referenced, understood, and consumed.

“The Verifiable Data Exchange (VDX) is our strategy to bring a higher degree of assurance to the exchange of data between peers, over the Internet and other digital networks. VDX is designed to provide a foundational element of authenticity and verification in data exchanges that precede a financial transaction. We help users and organizations to share data securely in a privacy-preserving manner. In transactions over the internet and other digital networks, our VDX raises trust between you and others,” explains Mohan.

Satish Mohan and his team at Dhiway are constantly working with a vision to make the world more transparent and trusted, using digital frameworks that can be universally referenced, understood, and consumed.

Revealing more, Mohan explains that his company’s VDX is India’s first-ever digital trust platform that was built with open standards. According to Mohan, emerging technologies enables trusted exchange of data between everything and everyone thereby improving the efficiency of governance, ease of doing business, and enriching customer experience and preserving privacy.

Mohan says that Dhiway’s VDX has the ability to transform digital user experiences, improve data accuracy, deliver tailored services, and reduce costs. Streamlining the transaction process across all channels, increasing ease of transacting for both parties, and removing the potential for human error comes under its features.

Exploiting Dhiway’s VDX opens up new market opportunities that have until now been constrained by expensive, inefficient, proprietary, and siloed systems. The streamlined exchange of data between multiple end-points, and the ability to reduce the overhead related to verification contributes to a dramatic reduction of fraud and greater convenience for everyone involved in the business of dealing with data, exhorts Mohan.

Mohan also indicates that such a secure exchange platform should be integral to every sector and industry that requires an exchange of data with a high degree of certainty and accuracy. The platform, architected with privacy by design principles, enables users (e.g. persons, organizations, IoT devices, autonomous agents) with the means to control and share data with third parties, without sharing information that is not needed to transact.

Mohan also indicates that such a secure exchange platform should be integral to every sector and industry that requires an exchange of data with a high degree of certainty and accuracy.

COVID-19 and digital trust: What’s the connection?

COVID-19 has certainly highlighted on how deeply interconnected businesses, industries, and markets really are. Businesses, today, impacted by the pandemic are struggling to protect and manage their digital assets and data — a struggle made more difficult in an increasingly complex enterprise environment that works from home and also includes the Internet of Things, edge computing, and Artificial Intelligence.

Today the internet enables nearly one half of humanity to reach out across the globe to interact, exchange ideas, and engage in business. As digitalization continues to evolve, our willingness and ability to trust these digital innovations and act on the basis of said trust is a crucial ingredient for the continued onward march.

“The COVID lockdown has accelerated the society’s march towards digitization of services and the drive to exchange value, information, and experience remotely. E-commerce, e-learning, mobile payments, telemedicine, work from home, and other such online engagements are set to grow at such exponential pace and volume that they will threaten to overshadow their traditional versions. Such a development will demand an easier and better way to establish online trust and digital identities of individuals. Digital Trust Platforms like Dhiway will have a major role to play in enabling such an ecosystem,” believes Mohan.

The COVID-19 pandemic has been the reason for a number of business processes and operations to examine the status quo. As much as it has impacted our daily lives, the changes are more far-reaching and pervasive for businesses and hence society. Efficiency in operations is now complementing the effectiveness of established business logic.

Empowering individuals and organizations to connect, share credentials, and build trust using completely decentralized and privacy-respecting infrastructure — where literally everyone can be the center of their own web of trust — will be the new incredible norm. And this will impact the future of the Internet.

“As we see more transactions ‘lift and shift’ to be available over the Internet – we will see a few big trends emerge. The way we see public internet being used is going to evolve and transform. An increasing set of users will be mindful of being aware of how to enable more secure transmissions. Cloud-native services and mobile-focused user experiences will become more important; security in transactions (right from purchase to payment) will have an extensive impact due to high-speed data networks becoming real; increased self-governance of data built around regulatory and legislative frameworks being created will come about. The elasticity in application infrastructure through multi and hybrid cloud approaches are key aspects to securing data oceans as well as data over the wire in transit,” predicts Mohan.

With a clear vision of the future, Mohan foresees, “Empowering individuals and organizations to connect, share credentials, and build trust using completely decentralized and privacy-respecting infrastructure — where literally everyone can be the center of their own web of trust — will be the new incredible norm. And this will impact the future of the Internet.”

Joining TrustOverIP Foundation – the deliberate need

Dhiway joined the Trust over IP (ToIP) Foundation as a Founding Steering Committee member – the first Indian company to do so. Hosted by the Linux Foundation, the ToIP foundation aims to provide the digital trust layer that was missing in the original design of the Internet and to trigger a new era of human possibility.

Mohan says that the goal of the foundation is to create a robust common standard that gives people and businesses the confidence that data is coming from a trusted source, allowing them to connect, interact and innovate at a speed and scale not possible today. The ToIP Foundation is being developed with global, pan-industry support from leading organizations with sector-specific expertise such as, IBM, Mastercard, Accenture, Evernym among others.

The current form of the Bill encourages companies to have more interest in topics such as data portability, right to erasure along with ensuring there are generally accepted good practices such as purpose definition and limitation and storage limitation.

The obvious connect: Internet & Personal Data Protection Bill, 2019

When we have discussed so much about trust and data exchange on the Internet, there is this obvious question on the Personal Data Protection Bill that cannot be omitted!

When questioned about the much proposed Personal Data Protection Bill, 2019, Mohan believes that the Bill brings about some structural changes in the way data exchanges are viewed along with defining the roles of various actors in the system. “The current form of the Bill encourages companies to have more interest in topics such as data portability, right to erasure along with ensuring there are generally accepted good practices such as purpose definition and limitation and storage limitation. Enabling the creation of a regulator (in the form of the DPA) is a welcome step along with a clear definition of data processor, data fiduciary, and so forth.

The consent manager and consent management approach in the Bill has good possibilities in empowering the citizen to self-govern their data. Technology stacks that implement open standards-based approaches to implement these will end up providing a unique customer experience when expanded to all forms and sorts of applications and transactions. We would like to see further conversations on the privacy-by-design element and the certification. At present it leaves scope for further fine-tuning,” opines Mohan.

Dhiway - The trust masters of the Internet

Induced by Covid-19 or not, throughout the world, digital technology is a defining feature of modern life. Internet-based tools and applications are increasingly getting embedded into our daily lives, and it is only fair to ask for an increased need to trust the technologies and the companies behind them more than ever before. As Mohan and his team at Dhiway foster that much required trust, securing data and privacy with their products, the digital trust factor seems reinforced ensuring confidence and closing the gap between trust and distrust.