Trust in the digital world is like banking’s five C’s for obtaining credit, according to Hilary Ward, head of managed identity services for Citi Global Transaction Services.
She was speaking Thursday as part of a panel on
Federal News Radio trying to answer the question: Is Trust the Next Killer App?
For the record, the answer was yes; and the five C’s in banking, the industry where Ward makes her mark, are: character (integrity), capacity (sufficient cash flow to service the obligation), capital (net worth), collateral (assets to secure the debt) and conditions (of the borrower and overall economy).
“Trust is knowing who you are dealing with, knowing you can collaborate and knowing they are going to be responsive and have integrity in your interactions,” she said. “Now extend that across enterprise boundaries.”
In other words, it’s not an easy problem to solve, but it is one that must be solved, according to Ward and her panel colleagues,
John Clippinger, founder and co-director of
The Law Lab at Harvard University, and
Jeff Voas, a computer scientist at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (
NIST).
“Trust is not a static property,” says Voas. “It evolves over time. It has to be built into the principals, into online transactions. But what is trust today is not trust tomorrow. It has to be part of the system. It is not something you glue on [after the fact].”
In essence, digital trust can be as fickle, and as fleeting, as it is in inter-personal relationships.
“Technology is just a layer,” says Ward. “It is the policies and the ability to have transparency to the rules.” That provides an expectation on how things will happen, which is then backed by a dispute resolution process. “The parties have to feel confident they can resolve issues,” Ward says.
Moderator
Michael Farber (right), a vice president with Booz Allen Hamilton's IT business, plied the trio with questions ranging from defining trust, to building standards, to understanding transparency, and to determining whether risk management and reputation can scale. (Clippinger and Ward say yes. Voas said he is still pondering.)
“One of the challenges I see is that if you believe in trust-as-a-service you have to be accountable to third-parties to enforce that trust,” said Clippinger. “To do that, you have to relinquish some sort of control. I think that is a huge obstacle for most companies.”
Gartner says that obstacle will take time to erode. The analyst firm predicts by next year “third-party providers will offer identity-proofing services and assume limited liability for individual identities.” And by 2013,” identity-proofing services will be used widely in industry segments with strong assurance requirements.”
Coming to grips with such risks throughout trust networks was a recurring theme.
“The Internet is the Wild West,” said Voas. “We have a grand challenge in taking the best practices out of [closed] communities and bringing them into [the Internet] community in terms of trust. The human factor is a big challenge. It is people trusting people.”
Clippinger said the Law Lab is very interested in reputation systems. “Reputation linked to authenticated identity is going to be very important.”
Ward said Citi thinks that it can use identity as “the underpinning of how things are done downstream.”
A big impact in all of this, according to the panel, is the emerging user-centric identity model, trust framework organizations like the Open Identity Exchange (OIX), and mobile platforms.
“We think mobile devices will be a key to gluing it together,” said Clippinger.
Ward said contract law will be a big part of trust. “Accountability will help build a fabric for the [trust] framework.”
In the end, the answer to the question “Is trust the next killer app?” was a resounding yes, but no one was discounting the number of variables that need to be considered before the killer is unleashed.