We are living in an era of truly remarkable change. Industries and enterprises are being transformed by new technologies. Incumbents are being disrupted. Disruptors are redefining markets and transforming customer expectations. With more than half the world’s population now online, organisations seeking to remain relevant are relying on digital technologies to underpin access to, and meaningful engagement with, their markets. This rapidly expanding connectivity is in turn amplifying the impact of bad actors. The increasing sophistication and frequency of cyber-attacks, as well as the increasing impact of basic human error, are heightening concerns about privacy. Violations of privacy are driving a new focus from regulators around the world, each mandating new rules and data rights to both protect consumers and sanction increasing criminal penalties for data breaches.
Global economies have been able to thrive based on the existence of trust between transactors in an exchange. The future of open government and the open enterprise is heavily dependent on the existence of digital trust. However, current technologies are providing inadequate protection to the privacy, misuse, or theft of sensitive data. This is the acute and unresolved challenge facing the digital world. The core digital stakeholders (consumers / enterprises / regulators) are all seeking a solution to the inherent weaknesses of the current digital trust model. Addressing the weaknesses will require redesigning the foundations of digital trust which involves:
| 1. | revisiting the need to centrally store sensitive data; |
| 2. | changing the way applications interact with that data; |
| 3. | changing the way individuals, the enterprise and third-parties access that data; and |
| 4. | providing individuals with more control over how their personal information is used and shared. |
