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As part of Microsoft’s mission to empower people and organizations to achieve more, we set out to discover a new approach to identity technologies. Our vision is simple:
Each of us needs a digital identity we own, one which securely and privately stores all its elements.
This self-owned identity must be easy to use and give us complete control over how our identity data is accessed and used.
I’m thrilled to announce the next major milestone in making this vision real. We are announcing the general availability (GA) of Entra Verified ID, as the newest member to join the Microsoft Entra portfolio.
Faster, more trustworthy way to verify
Customers rely on Azure AD to secure access to corporate resources. However, enabling use of credentials for utility beyond the company (e.g. prove employment for bank loan) is complex and comes with compliance risk. In contrast, identity documents from our everyday lives, like a driver’s license or passport, are well suited for utility beyond travel (e.g. age or residency). We believe an open standards-based Decentralized Identity system can unlock a new set of experiences that give users and organizations greater control over their data—and deliver a higher degree of trust and security for apps, devices, and service providers.
Key Capabilities
With today’s announcement, millions of Azure AD customers (free and premium) can now easily issue, request, and verify credentials to represent proof of employment, education, or any other claim.
Issue credentials. Customers can now design and issue verifiable credentials to represent proof of employment, education, or other claims. A holder of a credential can decide when, and with whom, to share it. Each credential is signed with cryptographic keys that the user owns and controls. These credentials can be presented and validated even if the issuing institution no longer exists.
Request and verify credentials. Unlike credentials issued by current centralized identity systems, verifiable credentials are standards-based. This makes it easy for developers to understand and does not require custom integrations. Applications can request and verify the authenticity of credentials from any organization using APIs included as part of the service.
Present credentials in a privacy respecting, secure manner. Users can manage and present credentials using Microsoft Authenticator. What makes this unique is it enables users to control who can access them, even if credentials are issued by organizations. We will be adding capabilities like selective disclosure, derived claims (e.g. proof of age instead of birth date) and measures preventing correlation.
Recover credentials. End-users can manage credentials using Microsoft Authenticator and recover from loss using a mnemonic-based (pass phrase) scheme. We continue to partner with the community to find more user friendly, elegant means of enabling recovery. In addition, we will provide custodial and social recovery solutions so users can choose a circle of trusted parties, across friends, family, and organizations.
Interoperable. In addition, we’ve developed a standards-based interop profile in partnership with IBM, Workday, Ping, and Mattr so anyone can build compatible digital wallets. This interop profile gives application developers a consistent way to manage credentials as part of the digital wallets they build and switch across wallets.
Partnership with leading identity verification providers
Some governments around the world are starting to issue digital credentials to verify foundational identity attributes (e.g. age or citizenship). We’ve established partnerships with 10 leading identity verification partners so enterprises can remotely verify foundational identity attributes across 192 countries, 6,000 identification documents, and 1,000’s of attributes for organizational attributes and individuals. End-users can present these credentials to quickly start a job, apply for a loan, or access secure apps and services—without having to repeatedly share their sensitive information.
“Identity proofing by leading identity verification partners, in the form of Verifiable Credentials, will help reduce
the remote onboarding time for our new employees from as much as three days [today] to as little
as 10 minutes—all while improving the employee experience and making a great ‘first’ impression!”
– Autodesk
Key scenarios
During the preview period, customers from around the world have issued and verified credentials across a variety of scenarios, ranging from remote onboarding at work, and collaboration across business boundaries to enabling education beyond the campus. Customers have issued and verified tens of thousands of credentials using our platform across a diverse set of industries to enable:
- Faster remote onboarding: Validate identity information for trustworthy self-service enrollment and reduced time-to-hire.
- Verify access to high value apps: Quickly verify an individual’s credentials and status to grant least-privilege access with confidence.
- Easy account recovery: Replace support calls and security questions with a streamlined self-service process to verify identities.
Our API first approach makes it easy for customers to integrate verifiable credentials in their existing apps and enables an easy jumpstart model to improve verifiability and compliance. These apps and services could be hosted on-premises or on Azure, AWS or GCP.
Get started with Entra Verified ID today
Customers can get started with Entra Verified ID for free with Azure AD Free license. Azure AD Premium license will be required for enterprise scale (more than fifty thousand transactions per month).
“We’ve already identified around 60 different use cases for verifiable credentials. It’s so flexible that it can
be used in potentially hundreds of different ways throughout an organization.”
- Read the full customer story from Avanade here
Learn more about verifiable credentials and decentralized identity:
Learn more about Microsoft identity:
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