Let's Talk About Digital Identity Ubisecure

Let's talk about digital identity with Craig Ramsay, Senior Solutions Architect at Omada.
What is Identity Governance and Why is it important? Craig Ramsay, Senior Solutions Architect at Omada joins Oscar to explore all things Identity Governance including – the role of Identity Governance in compliance with regulations and standards, how it affects security and risk management for organisation, alongside some real-world examples of Identity Governance in use.

[Transcript below]
"We’re still trying to shake off the thing that - security is a barrier to efficiency. There’s an old adage that ‘efficiency is insecure, but security is inefficient’. But I don’t think that’s true anymore."


Craig Ramsay, Senior Solution Architect at Omada, from Edinburgh, Scotland. I have worked at Omada for 3 years and have previously worked at RSA Security and different financial services organisations in the UK within their Identity functions. Outside of work my main interests are hiking and travelling.

Connect with Craig on LinkedIn.

We’ll be continuing this conversation on LinkedIn using #LTADI – join us @ubisecure!

Go to @Ubisecure on YouTube to watch the video transcript for episode 102.


Podcast transcript
Oscar Santolalla: This week I am joined by Craig Ramsay from Omada, here to discuss the importance of identity governance and how it is helping to solve problems in real-world. Stay tuned to find out more.

Let’s Talk About Digital Identity, the podcast connecting identity and business. I am your host, Oscar.

Oscar: Hello, for today’s episode about Identity Governance and Administration, mostly known as IGA, we have invited a super interesting guest who is Craig Ramsay. He is a Senior Solution Architect at Omada. He’s from Edinburgh, Scotland. He has worked for Omada for three years and has previously worked at RSA Security and different financial services organisations in the United Kingdom within their identity functions. Outside of work, Craig’s main interests are hiking and travelling. Hello, Craig.

Craig Ramsay: Hey, Oscar. How are you doing?

Oscar: Very good. Nice talking with you.

Craig: Thank you, you too.

Oscar: So, let’s talk about digital identity. As usual, we want to hear more about our guests. Please tell us about yourself and your journey to this world of identity.

Craig: Sure. So, I mean, thank you for the introduction. And I guess, in terms of my journey into identity, it was a little bit by fluke rather than by design. I studied Computer Science and when I graduated, I joined an operational IT graduate scheme. They had recently started a new IAM project, because I think back in 2008, identity and access management, identity governance wasn’t as mature as it is now. It was still kind of seen as an operational IT project rather than an information security principle. So, the drivers there were more about the efficiency, automated provisioning and stuff. But yeah, they were looking for a graduate on that project. That was me.

And apart from a few years where I decided to try what it was like being a policeman, I have worked in identity ever since either for, as you said, financial services organisations doing the work at the coalface or for vendors, either in project delivery or, and you know pre-sales in my solution architect role.

Oscar: Excellent. So, let’s go first with the basics. We have not talked about IGA yet in this podcast, have not focused on that. So, tell us, what is that? What is Identity Governance and Administration, IGA? What is important?

Craig: Sure. So, I mean, identity governance, when you focus on it, at its core, it’s a solution that will ensure the right individuals have the right access for the right reasons at the right time in your organisation. So, it’s protecting the authorisations or the resource assignments within your organisation. And that’s often policy-driven to ensure that all of, and I think the important distinction here when we t

Let's talk about digital identity with Jesse Kurtto, DPO and Data Scientist at Ubisecure.
Is now the right time to invest into Identity and Access Management (IAM)? Join us for episode 101, as Oscar is exploring why now is the right time to invest into IAM with Jesse Kurtto, DPO and Data Scientist at Ubisecure – as they delve into the current economic situation and some of the key factors of investing into identity management.

[Transcript below]
"Digitalisation is ongoing, it's accelerating, it's unstoppable."
Known as the guy who shortened the world and lived to tell the tale, Jesse’s career is gradually arching from the Wild West world of finance to his current position as the DPO and Data Scientist at Ubisecure. Learning to program before learning to read Finnish and visiting 25 countries before 25, he’s no stranger in exploring uncharted waters and discovering connections that others might miss. Surrounded by a delicate balance of the latest technology and dozens of carefully tended houseplants, his secret hobby is putting the hiking boots and RPGs aside for a moment in order to write to his beloved snail mail friends across the world.

We’ll be continuing this conversation on Twitter using #LTADI – join us @ubisecure!

Go to @Ubisecure on YouTube to watch the video transcript for episode 101.


Podcast transcript
Oscar: Is this the right time to invest in Identity and Access Management? This week Jesse Kurtto from Ubisecure has joined us to answer this question and discuss the current economic situation. Stay tuned to find out more.

Let’s Talk About Digital Identity, the podcast connecting identity and business. I am your host, Oscar Santolalla.

Oscar: Today’s guest is Jesse Kurtto. Jesse’s career has gradually arched from the Wild West world of finance, to his current position as a Data Protection Officer and Data Scientist at Ubisecure. Learning Program before learning to read Finnish and visiting 25 countries before 25. He is no stranger to exploring unchartered waters and discovering connections that others might miss. Surrounded by a delicate balance of the latest technology and dozens of carefully tended houseplants, his secret hobby is writing to his beloved snail mail friends across the world. Welcome Jesse.

Jesse: Thank you for the invite, Oscar. Nice to be here.

Oscar: Great having you, Jesse, definitely. We’re going to have a super interesting conversation about the market in Digital Identity and Identity and Access Management.

First of all, we always want to hear more about our guests. So please tell us a bit about yourself and your journey to the world of digital identity.

Jesse: All right. So, like many or even most of us in the digital identity field, I actually never really actively sought to be a specialist, IAM specialist, on purpose. And my personal background is actually nothing technology even, but in finance and investing more specifically. So, a chance encounter and I liked the people who interviewed me and decided to stay for a while, and that while has been over seven years now. And I'm still learning something new every day, checking out how we really the world of digital identity like and frankly haven’t ever regretted decision. No two days have really been the same and the field continues to evolve and develop quite a bit every year.

Oscar: Yeah, excellent and definitely hearing at Ubisecure, we definitely appreciate having this – well call it, like a blend of knowledge - the financial market, not lesser than what you bring with the security and digital identity knowledge, very practical knowledge you also had. So, it's always super interesting having those conversation with you.

And for the first time here on the podcast, we are going to have that, a bit more financial touch on that - What is coming, especially in this well this year, and I think also the years to come. The previous year and the year to come I think,

Let's talk about digital identity with Heather Flanagan, Principal at Spherical Cow Consulting and David Birch, Principal at 15 Mb, author, advisor and commentator on digital financial services.
This is the 100th episode of Let’s Talk about Digital Identity – in this special episode two of our most popular guests, Heather Flanagan and David Birch, rejoined the podcast to explore what is exciting them in passwordless, identity wallets and digital money.

[Transcript below]
"Passwords have got to go. As we're moving to passkeys, I think there's always room for improvement on - even on them. If nothing else, focusing a little bit more on the user experience so that people will have a better understanding of what this means."
Heather Flanagan, Principal at Spherical Cow Consulting and choreographer for Identity Flash Mob, comes from a position that the Internet is led by people, powered by words, and inspired by technology. She has been involved in leadership roles with some of the most technical, volunteer-driven organisations on the Internet, including IDPro as Principal Editor, the IETF, the IAB, and the IRTF as RFC Series Editor, ICANN as Technical Writer, and REFEDS as Coordinator, just to name a few. If there is work going on to develop new Internet standards, or discussions around the future of digital identity, she is interested in engaging in that work.

Listen Episode 74, where Heather discusses Making Identity Easy for Everyone or connect with Heather on LinkedIn.
“The thing that's broken in digital money at the moment, is identity, not the payment bit.”
David G.W Birch is an author, advisor and commentator on digital financial services. Principal at 15Mb, his advisory company, he is Global Ambassador for the secure electronic transactions consultancy, Consult Hyperion, Fintech Ambassador for Digital Jersey and Non-Executive Chair at Digiseq Ltd. He is an internationally-recognised thought leader in digital identity and digital money. Ranked one of the top 100 fintech influencers for 2021, previously named one of the global top 15 favourite sources of business information by Wired magazine and one of the top ten most influential voices in banking by Financial Brand, he created one of the top 25 “must read” financial IT blogs and was found by PR Daily to be one of the top ten Twitter accounts followed by innovators (along with Bill Gates and Richard Branson).

His latest book “The Currency Cold War—Cash and Cryptography, Hash Rates and Hegemony” (published in May 2020) “paints a fascinating and stimulating picture of the future of the world of digital payments and its possible impact on the wider global and economic orders” – Philip Middleton, OMFIF Digital Monetary Institute. His previous book “Before Babylon, Beyond Bitcoin: From money we understand to money that understands us” was published in June 2017 with a foreword by Andrew Haldane, Chief Economist at the Bank of England. The LSE Review of Books said the book should be “widely read by graduate students of finance, financial law and related topics as well as policy makers involved in financial regulation”.  The London Review of Books called his earlier book “Identity is the New Money” fresh, original, wide-ranging and “the best book on general issues around new forms of money”.

More information is available at dgwbirch.com and you can follow him @dgwbirch on X.

Listen to Episode 75 with David discussing Digital Currencies or connect with David on LinkedIn.

We’ll be continuing this conversation on X using #LTADI – join us @ubisecure!

Go to @Ubisecure on YouTube to watch the video transcript for episode 100.


Podcast transcript
Oscar Santolalla: This is episode number 100 of Let’s Talk About Digital Identity. And for this special occasion, we have invited back Heather Flanagan, and David Birch.

Let’s Talk About Digital Identity, the podcast connecting identity and business. I am your host, Oscar Santolalla

Let's talk about digital identity with Gautam Hazari, mobile identity guru, technology enthusiast, AI expert and futurist & is the CTO of Sekura.id.
Join this episode of Let’s Talk About Digital Identity where Gautam Hazari, mobile identity guru, technology enthusiast, AI expert and futurist & is the CTO of Sekura.id joins Oscar to discuss the missing identity layer of the internet. Gautam shares details about what the missing identity layer is, more about mobile networks as well as discussing Gautam’s TEDx talk.

[Transcript below]
"Internet did not have that identity layer. So what did we do? We created a trust-less model."
Gautam Hazari is a mobile identity guru, technology enthusiast, AI expert and futurist & is the CTO of Sekura.id, the global leader in mobile identity services. He led the implementation of the mobile identity initiative – Mobile Connect - for around 60 mobile operators across 30 countries. Gautam had also been an advisor to start-ups in digital identity, healthcare, Internet of Things and Fraud and Security management. He is a thought leader for digital identity, advocating solving the identity crisis in the digital world and speaking on making the digital world a safer place. If you ask Gautam, “What is the best password?” you’ll always get the same answer: “The best password is no password”.

Connect with Gautam on LinkedIn.

We’ll be continuing this conversation on Twitter using #LTADI – join us @ubisecure!

Go to @Ubisecure on YouTube to watch the video transcript for episode 99.


Podcast transcript
Oscar Santolalla: On this episode of Let’s Talk About Digital Identity we are joined by Gautam Hazari, from Sekura.ID as we discuss what is the missing Identity layer of the Internet. Stay tuned to find out more.

Let’s Talk About Digital Identity, the podcast connecting identity and business. I am your host, Oscar Santolalla.

Oscar: Hello and thank you for joining us, a new episode of Let’s Talk About Digital Identity. Today’s guest is Gautam Hazari. He is a mobile identity guru, a technology enthusiast, artificial intelligence expert and futurist. And he is the CTO of Sekura.id, the global leader in mobile identity services. Gautam led the implementation of the mobile identity initiative Mobile Connect for around 60 mobile operators across 30 countries. He has also been an advisor to startups in Digital Identity, healthcare, the Internet of Things and fraud and security management. Hello, Gautam.

Gautam Hazari: Hi, Oscar. How are you?

Oscar: Very good, happy to have you here in the show.

Gautam: My pleasure. Thanks.

Oscar: It’s going to be super interesting. Now, we are focusing on mobile - mobile initiatives, like the one you are working with, can help us to solve the identity problems we usually discuss in this show.

First of all, I would like to hear a bit more about yourself. So, if you can tell us your journey to this world of digital identity.

Gautam: Sure. Thanks, Oscar. I have been in the identity space for quite some time now. And it started in the telecom world and that’s why I talk about mobile identity a lot. So I spent many years of my life in the telecom, so I worked with the Vodafone group for nearly 14, 15 years. What I realised is that there is one thing that the mobile operators have done quite efficiently is solving what I call the identity crisis of the internet. I started to talk about it quite passionately in different forms.

And in 2013, end of 2013, GSMA approached me. GSMA as you know is the GSM Association which is the trade organisation for the mobile operators. So the GSMA board was discussing that there were some assets within the mobile operators which can actually help in solving the identity crisis in the internet. Then they approached me that, “Hey, you were talking about this identity thing for quite some time, do you want to come and join?” And that’s when I joined GSMA to do the initiative for mobile operators to so

Let's talk about digital identity with Russ Cohn, the (Go-To-Market) for IDVerse.
In episode 98, Russ Cohn the Go-To-Marketing for IDVerse joins Oscar to explore Generative AI within Identity Verification - including what is generative AI and deepfakes, why deepfakes are a threat for consumers and businesses, and some of the biggest pain points in the identity industry and how generative AI can support this.

[Transcript below]
"It's very important that we understand these threats and start to mitigate and create ways of helping to support and stop these practices."
Russ Cohn is the (Go-To-Market) for IDVerse, which provides online identity verification technology for businesses in the digital economy. Russ has spent more than 20 years scaling businesses of all sizes by delivering successful growth strategies across the UK, EMEA & US markets within fast-paced and high-growth online media, fraud, identity, SaaS, e-commerce, and data-driven technology solutions.

His strong tech knowledge is coupled with deep operational and commercial experience building teams within SaaS, advertising and marketing technology-driven revenue models. Russ was previously a key early member of the Google UK leadership team who grew the team from 25 to 3,000 people and the revenue from £10m to £1billion during his tenure. He brings deep experience supporting international technology companies and has a passion for marketing development, startup growth and technology solutions.

IDVerse empowers true identity globally. Our Zero Bias AI™ tested technology pioneered the use of generative AI to train deep neural network systems to protect against discrimination. Our fully-automated solution verifies users in seconds with just their face and smartphone—in over 220 countries and territories with any official ID document.

Connect with Russ on LinkedIn.

We’ll be continuing this conversation on Twitter using #LTADI – join us @ubisecure!

Go to @Ubisecure on YouTube to watch the video transcript for episode 98.


Podcast transcript
What is generative AI? This week Russ Cohn, from IDVerse has joined us to discuss generative AI and deepfakes and the threat this imposes on businesses and consumers for their digital identities. Stay tuned to find out more.

Let’s Talk About Digital Identity, the podcast connecting identity and business. I am your host, Oscar Santolalla.

Oscar Santolalla: Hello and thank you for joining a new episode of Let’s Talk About Digital Identity. Artificial Intelligence, in particular, Generative Artificial Intelligence is a topic that has been, I believe on most of our radars in the last 12 months, particularly. And there are amazing things going on. But also, we know that the bad guys are also using those tools. And one of those is related to deepfakes that are being used to cheat the identity verification system having existing until now.

So, to see how we are going to solve those problems in identity verification, these newer problems, we have a special guest today who is Russ Cohn. He is the go-to market for IDVerse, a company which provides online identification technology for businesses in the digital economy.

Russ has spent more than 20 years scaling businesses of all sizes by delivering successful growth strategies across the UK, EMEA, and US markets, within fast-paced and high-growth online media, fraud, identity, SaaS, e-commerce, and data-driven technology solutions. His strong tech knowledge is coupled with deep operational and commercial experience building things with SaaS, advertising and marketing technology driven revenue models.

Hello, Russ.

Russ Cohn: Hello, Oscar. How are you?

Oscar: Very good. Happy to have you here.

Russ: Thank you. Very glad to be here.

Oscar: Fantastic. It’s great to have you here. And we'll talk about the deepfakes and how the newest practices in identity verification are solving these problems. So, let's start, let's talk about digital identity,

Let's talk about digital identity with Riley Hughes, Cofounder and CEO at Trinsic.
This week, Oscar is joined by Riley Hughes, Cofounder and CEO at Trinsic and host of the Future of Identity podcast. They delve into Verifiable Credentials, including what verifiable credentials are, some examples and success stories of how these are being used and implemented, the connections between verifiable credentials and wallets and whether verifiable credentials will become interoperable.

[Transcript below]
"It seems like the future of identity will be much better than it is today."
Riley Hughes is CEO and Co-founder of Trinsic, a reusable identity infrastructure provider. As a leader in the decentralized identity community, Riley has pioneered efforts on making emerging, privacy-preserving technologies such as identity wallets and verifiable credentials adoptable to the masses. He began his career in the decentralized identity space as the second employee hired at the Sovrin Foundation where he established and led several teams.

Connect with Riley on LinkedIn.

We’ll be continuing this conversation on Twitter using #LTADI – join us @ubisecure!

Go to @Ubisecure on YouTube to watch the video transcript for episode 97.


Podcast transcript
Oscar Santolalla: This week we are discussing verifiable credentials. I am joined by Riley Hughes, the host of The Future of Identity Podcast, to explore some of the most recent success stories of verifiable credentials and how we can work to improve adoption moving forward. Stay tuned to find out more.

Let’s Talk About Digital Identity, the podcast connecting identity and business. I am your host, Oscar Santolalla.

Hello, and thank you for joining a new episode over Let’s Talk About Digital Identity. One term that has been in our radar for the last - I would say four or five years has been verifiable credentials. Which I will say personally, I'm feeling that is becoming in the last one, two years pretty crystallised. And we have not talked too much about this lately, so I have a very special guest who has a lot of insight - what's going on worldwide about verifiable credentials.

Our guest today is Riley Hughes. He is the CEO and Co-founder of Trinsic, a reusable identity infrastructure provider. As a leader in the decentralised identity community, Riley has pioneered efforts on making emerging privacy preserving technologies - such as identity wallets and verifiable credentials - adoptable to the masses. He began his career in the decentralised identity space as the second employee hired at the Sovrin Foundation, where he established and led several teams. Hello, Riley.

Riley Hughes: Hi, Oscar. Great to be here.

Oscar: It's great to have this conversation with you. So very welcome. And let's talk about digital identity. And as usual, I want to hear more about our guests. So, if you can tell us about yourself, and especially your journey to this world of identity.

Riley: Happy to do so. I am very fortunate to have totally fallen into this amazing industry. And it happened because while I was at college, I was seeing all those smart people around me going and getting jobs at elite places, you know, investment banks and management consulting firms, and so forth. And I thought that I wanted to kind of differentiate my resume enough that I could, maybe I could get an interview as well at one of these places. So, I thought, “What is the most, kind of, off the wall internship that I could get that would differentiate me from all of my peers?”

And I ended up getting a job at the Sovrin Foundation, as you mentioned. Sovrin at that time was very early. I was, as mentioned, the second employee hired, and it was kind of a blockchain meets identity meets nonprofit, you know, meets early employee kind of a role. And so, it, sort of, fit my criteria for differentiating my resume. But it was also just really, really exciting to be part of an early organisation.