To continue streamlining the way we operate here at Condatis, we are implementing Microsoft Entra Verified ID in our daily work processes. Verifiable credentials help us further secure the way visitors access our office, increase staff onboarding efficiency, and simplify our on-site health and safety procedures.
By using verifiable credentials, we’re able to fully trust records of physical and digital access, ensuring our sites are secure and safely accessible for colleagues and visitors. Let’s understand our use of Entra Verified ID further.
The challenge
The opportunities associated with digital transformation are huge. For companies to innovate their services, digital transformation is essential. But of course, with any type of digital advancement comes the potential for risk – the risk of data governance challenges in particular. Let’s consider the following challenge-associated scenarios:
- An organisation’s users are distributed and mobility between physical sites is required.
- There is a diverse existing legacy technology ecosystem or a need for verifiable data from trusted partners.
- There is a need for preserving data security, privacy, and transparency for users and organisations.
- Securing on-site physical access
- New hybrid work policies for tracking remote and office-based employees
- Relying on paper documents for onboarding and difficulty accessing a staff directory to manage training records or employee data managing data silos
The solution: build trusted digital relationships
Microsoft Azure AD Verifiable Credentials allows us to empower new and existing staff with the ability to hold their data on their digital wallet and share their credentials in a way that is trusted and convenient to them.
We’ve rolled out verifiable workplace credentials as part of our business process across our:
- HR function, to simplify the ways we onboard new staff and manage their training credentials during their employment at Condatis.
- Front of House function, to streamline how we invite external visitors to our offices.
- Health & Safety measures, to ensure the safety and wellbeing of those on-site, especially if an on-site emergency arises.
Chris Tate, CEO of Condatis said:
“This is an exciting time for Condatis. Some of our team work remotely, and some work in the office. It’s important for us to know who’s on-site, and be able to keep them safe in the event of an emergency. We’re so proud to be early adopters of Microsoft Verifiable Credentials ourselves and proud of the results we’ve driven for our clients. Verifiable Credentials helps us empower our own people to control their data, enabling us to protect their privacy and put the power back in their hands.”
Jess Igoe, Chief People Officer said:
“The new system streamlines how we onboard new employees and how we manage their credentials during their employment at Condatis. Training and continuous development is a major part of our business and impacts how we allocate teams to fit customer projects. In circumstances where our team are required to prove security clearance, such as enhanced disclosure documentation, the system simplifies the way we can provide evidence. With Verifiable Credentials, we can also trace Microsoft certified training records in addition to others like Fire Safety, First Aid and Mental Health First Aid.”
The technology: Condatis Credential Gateway
We have developed a gateway to enhance Microsoft’s Entra Verified ID solutions. The Condatis Credential Gateway © (CCG) is a decentralized identity service that provides us and our clients with a platform to simplify credential issuance and verification.
providing verifiable credential capabilities in a common standards-based approach to support easy integration with any verifiable credential or Identity Verification service provider without being bound to a provider, or limited to a single use case.
In an integrated identity strategy, verifiable credentials combined with CCG offer a solution where communications protocols need to be merged, converging data for a streamlined identity journey. By issuing personal identification data to a mobile device loaded with secure wallets, users can share, hold, and control their data on the go. When requested this data can be shared and cryptographically verified to ensure it hasn’t been changed since it was issued, without needing to link back to the original issuer of the credential.
The Condatis Credential Gateway simplifies the introduction and implementation of Verifiable Credentials within organisations, enabling them to be integrated into identity journeys using existing data sources or external services. Through standards-based API’s credential data can be extracted from existing systems, credentials issued, and the verification process managed.
The Condatis Credential Gateway can chain identity journey steps together, using Azure AD and external Identity Verification or Biometric capture services, to generate a verifiable credential.
Digital Opportunities: Reducing Costs & Risks. Improving security and efficiency.
Our clients and partners use our Credential Gateway to explore solutions to Staff and Student Passporting challenges and discover new digital opportunities, such as:
- Connecting people and organisations: identifying staff and students as they move between physical sites to dramatically improve administrative efficiency and flexibility.
- Improving privacy & transparency: by placing users at the centre of the management and control of their data using digital wallet consent models.
- Quality of service: by recording attributes related to people to improve appraisals, employment onboarding and skills development.
- Mitigating and managing risk: within regulated environments, immutable tracking of who and what has happened during a process.
- Adapting technology diversity: allowing improved identity management without wholesale system change, such as Sellafield as one of 13 independent estate sites in the UK and the 223 NHS trusts within England.
- Building trusted digital relationships: between organisations without the need to build direct links, for example combating qualification fraud or checking compliance to sector requirements.
Key Takeaways
- CCG dramatically improves data privacy and transparency by placing the user at the centre of control.
- Verifiable Credentials and the CCG enable organisational cost savings by streamlining organisational administration.
- The CCG can be used as pure play decentralized identity solution or integrated as part of a hybrid solution to solve complex identity challenges.
- CCG offers organisations stability and identity expertise in a maturing technology.
- CCG offers standards-based APIs, such as OIDC, that can be used to orchestrate identity journeys and issue and verify verifiable credentials.
- Organisations can integrate the CGG by either building their own applications, connecting to existing systems, such as Azure AD, or working with Condatis’ to build customised applications.
- The CCG is designed to be expandable allowing the chaining of identity services, such as identity verification or biometric capture, and the addition of new technologies as they become available to the market, such as personal identity hubs.
John Yau, Chief Information Officer said:
“The examples we have deployed within Condatis demonstrate practical use cases operating within the same organisation. But the principles are similar to the wider scenarios where multiple parties are involved. Verifiable credentials are digitally signed using cryptographic methods, creating an immutable chain of trust leading to the issuer of the credential. This means you can count on the provenance and integrity of the digital credential. i.e. you can’t argue with it! That’s a lot harder to do with a paper document or email. The use of open standards provides a basis from which to build scalable and extensible decentralised identity ecosystems. The decentralised nature means no personal data has to be held in database silos, so risk of data breach is eliminated. There are huge benefits from the user’s viewpoint.
They can control what data is presented to the verifier, on a “need to know” basis. This ‘data minimalization’ is safer where there are privacy concerns, as there is less scope for personal information leakage. Wallet technology on mobile phone devices offers a convenient user experience, with the added benefit of using biometric binding for authentication.”
Customer Success: Delivered in partnership with Microsoft
Enhancing student experiences with Microsoft Entra Verified ID
Condatis and Microsoft engaged in a Proof of Value project with the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology. The Proof of Value (PoV) focused on using Entra Verified ID to facilitate smoother student onboarding and use cases to enhance the student experience. (Read the full case study…)
Optimising staff movement for Sellafield Ltd – a verifiable credentials case study
This verifiable credentials case study covers Condatis and Sellafield’s work to optimise staff movement with distributed ledger technology to expand Sellafield’s employee identity management capabilities. (Read the full case study…)
Microsoft Case Study | With high levels of security and trust, the NHS rapidly meets clinical demands using verified credentials
Transform your business with Condatis and Microsoft. Find out how you can use our Credential Gateway to transform your business with verified credentials.