TrustBuilder customer Fednot wins KuppingerCole award: “It’s all about trust.”
What a reward for great teamwork: TrustBuilder customer Fednot, the Royal Federation of Belgian Notaries, won an award at KuppingerCole’s European Identity and Cloud conference. In Berlin, Fednot was given a big round of applause for its Izimi digital vault project as it won the award in the category ‘Verifiable Credentials’. TrustBuilder’s IAM solution is a core element of Izimi.
During the award presentation, KuppingerCole analysts praised Izimi for its commitment to security and privacy, as the Izimi platform gives all Belgian citizens the opportunity to safely store their own documents and exchange them with third parties
Digital vault technology to guarantee security and authenticity
Izimi is a digital vault that is available to all Belgian citizens and is easy to set up and use. Citizens can upload documents to the vault using their PC or smartphone, organize the documents and invite their contacts (professionals, advisors, notaries, family, friends…) to their vault. Citizens have total control and decide for themselves what they keep in the safe, what data they share with third parties and for how long. The notary, as a neutral party and public official, offers the firm guarantee that the data stored in an Izimi vault will never be used for commercial purposes. This distinguishes the initiative from commercial digital storage and exchange products. Within Izimi, there is no place for unwanted commercial advertisements, nor for use/misuse of the stored data for commercial purposes.
In her acknowledgement speech, Fednot Clustermanager Citizen & Notary, Ellen De Munck pointed out that it’s all about trust: “Trust from our citizens, trust from our notaries and their collaborators, trust from our ecosystem partners, but also trust in data and the way data is stored and exchanged, trust in our system, our technology and the technical components. But it’s also trust in our partners like TrustBuilder who, together with us, make sure that Izimi is a suitable and valuable solution for all Belgian citizens.”
How TrustBuilder protects the Izimi ecosystem
In a world where unreliable data and fake news gain more prominence, it is important to certify documents and verify credentials. Izimi guarantees authenticity and gives the assurance that the digitally stored document has not been falsified. An Izimi document that is offered to a third party is genuine. The guarantee of certainty is also reflected in the chain of trust created within Izimi. Once the citizen or a third party authorized by the citizen makes data available in the digital vault, the transactions with Izimi are tracked and displayed together with the data. Once data are available within the Izimi ecosystem, they are immutable. Parties with whom the citizen shares this data are guaranteed of its authenticity.
The role of TrustBuilder is to verify the identities of users and professionals and assign fine-grained authorization based on policies.
TrustBuilder authenticates citizens on the Izimi web interface with Itsme (Belgian federated Identity Provider) or the Belgian e-ID card using a cardreader, as well on the mobile Izimi application using Itsme. Notaries and employees of the notary studies are authenticated with Itsme, the e-ID card or an eIDAS authentication solution with TrustBuilder. Fine-grained policies connect the two different ecosystems (citizen and notaries), offering single sign on for notary studies that need to access the notary part of the Izimi vault. Physical documents can be certified by the notary during their digitization using electronic signing through the Belgian e-ID card, facilitated by TrustBuilder.
Pioneering together
TrustBuilder’s VP of Product, Kurt Berghs, who closely worked on the Izimi project with Fednot, commented: “FedNot was a pioneer in digitizing its processes, starting already over 20 years ago. FedNot is also a pioneer in setting up a Izimi data vault that protects citizens’ documents and data. FedNot is also an innovator in moving its identity and access management to the cloud, together with TrustBuilder.” According to Berghs, “TrustBuilder is unique in its ability of adding different identities to different applications in a neutral ecosystem such as Izimi. No other IAM vendor supports connections to so many European Identity Providers. Izimi is not only a special project in terms of security and verifiable credentials. Thanks to its ease of use, the digital vault that stores digital twins of physical official documents is also accessible to any citizen, regardless of their age or digital proficiency. Izimi is a disruptive innovation in service to citizens. The trust that we built into the solution also makes it a secure disruptive innovation.”
Izimi is not the only Fednot project that TrustBuilder’s IAM supports, we are also partnering to protect access to other citizen-oriented applications and the professional applications notaries use, as well as the connectivity to partner applications. Read the full customer story on Fednot here.
