Blockchain Technology in Identity and Access Management (IAM): New era of Identity Security

Blockchain-based digital identities have the potential to revolutionize the management of personal information online. By addressing the limitations of traditional identity management systems, blockchain-based digital identification offers a more secure, decentralized, and user-centric approach to handling digital IDs. The consumer industry, particularly in the telecom and IoT sectors, stands to benefit greatly from the integration of blockchain technology. This shift is not just a passing trend but a transformation with compelling reasons behind it:

1. Digital Identity Verification: Identity verification, also known as identity proofing, imposes significant costs on organizations, amounting to hundreds of billions of dollars each year. By embracing blockchain technology, organizations can position themselves as leaders and early adopters, enabling them to tap into emerging markets. Consumer-based companies, which already enjoy a high level of customer trust and possess vast amounts of data, are particularly well-suited to act as a source of identity and authentication.
2. Non-repudiation: Blockchain's capability to timestamp data in an unalterable state while maintaining confidentiality has broad applications in various fields. This simple method allows for the insertion of every action performed by an individual into the blockchain, providing irrefutable proof of occurrence at the time when a specific block was mined. By including the actor's name or other identifier in the document, it becomes clear who performed certain operations, ensuring non-repudiation.
3. Authorization: The unalterable state of blocks within a blockchain makes it an ideal candidate for user behavior-based authorization. User's previous activities can be recorded in a blockchain, serving as an authorization source for future actions. This approach paves the way for improved user behavioral analysis and a more flexible authorization model.
4. Identity Certification: Blockchain technology can be harnessed to track and validate the identity recertification process, as well as to verify the trustworthiness of certifiers. In large consumer organizations, where entities such as users, devices, and third-party vendors abound, utilizing blockchain for identity certification and authentication during data sharing, whether on private or public blockchains, emerges as a viable and highly valuable use case.
5. Device Integrity Verification: The use of Blockchain technologies has great security potential. More and more devices are being introduced into the enterprise and for cyber-physical systems the integrity of data is the key concern over confidentiality. Blockchain technology can be brought into play to detect compromise of such devices. Organization where devices are key and its tracking and use are more significant, DIV could be a viable use case.

The integration of blockchain technology into identity and access management has the potential to transform the way organizations handle digital identities. From digital identity verification and non-repudiation to authorization, identity certification, and device integrity verification, the benefits of blockchain-based IAM are numerous and significant. Embracing this technology will enable organizations to enhance security, reduce costs, and stay at the forefront of the evolving digital landscape.