Mobile Number- The Key To Centralised Identity Management

With over 207 Mn customers (TRAI 2007 Data), opportunities in the mobile space are now extending beyond the usual voice and text based communication. Initiatives like mBanking are already underway and growing significantly. But, given the current teledensity levels and the continued rapid growth, the yet unexplored territory of mobiles as a means of identification and authentication holds immense opportunity.

Considering the scope of identity projects like the UID, and with identities being created for mBanking and other initiatives, the mobile number can hold the key to centralised identity management.

Biztech2.com spoke to Vishaal Gupta, CEO of Information Rights Management (IRM) provider, Seclore on how Identity Management through mobile will be critical in convergence of various identities to develop a centralised identity platform.

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What are the opportunities that exist in the mobile space today?

I see the mobile itself being used as a significant authentication and identity platform. Today the one thing that the mobile number represents is a method of communication. However, it is now being extended to other services like mBanking, which will also utilise some kind of identity detection mechanism. Most importantly, I foresee the mobile as an identity medium significantly extending its reach to services like data security, cloud based services, etc. For instance, if one wants to log-on to a bank’s website, then the mobile phone can be used as an authentication medium. Or, if someone wants to use a particular confidential piece of information, then the mobile phone can be used as an authentication medium in transference, because when accessing the information one needs to have their mobile phone.

What do you foresee as the immediate challenges in achieving this?

The adoption of mobile technology is definitely not a challenge. The challenge in the use of the mobile as an identity platform is going to be convergence. Today if you look at identity platforms they are heterogeneous, and disparate. So when you need to communicate with the government, you need a digital signature, whereas when you log-on to your online banking account, there is an identity which is provided by the bank. On the other hand, when you log into your computer there is an identity provided by the corporation. Hence, the disparity.

All of these getting linked to one common platform, which is your mobile number, is the key requirement. The timeframe within which this is likely to happen will depend on how soon organisations are going to start using the mobile as an identity mechanism.

I already see a lot of action on this front by the banks with the introduction of mobile banking, mobile remittances, etc. I see other enterprises, and entities like the government and cloud based service providers also rapidly moving to the mobile as an authentication platform.

How soon do you see this transformation happening?

It depends significantly on what is being enabled using the mobile phone at this point of time. So, if you’re talking about mobile phone as a banking mechanism, then that is already happening. The mobile phone as an authentication medium for government interactions is going to follow with the UID project. So, UID would need to have some level of deployment readiness before this convergence actually takes place. On the enterprise side I see the adoption at least 2 years away. However, among the SMEs and the cloud based service providers, I expect the adoption starting to happen in the next 2-3 quarters. Overall, by mid 2011 we will see the momentum building up.

Could you talk about Seclore’s role in this space?

Seclore is very active on this whole idea of creating a centralised identity provider, which is independent of a particular business or commercial entity. We are already engaged with multiple partners on how we can create a centralised identity provider providing identities across corporations.
But, while the system has been robustly tested, there are some pre-requisites in terms of roll out of other services (UID, more mBanking initiatives) before Seclore itself can roll out a service. We see this happening by February-March 2011.