Wednesday 18 January 2023

A joint event between the University of Surrey’s Centre for Cyber Security and the SASIG, the UK’s premier cybersecurity network.

Identity access management has been a core topic of cybersecurity for many years, however, new technologies are changing how these functions might be provided. Advances in areas such as biometric authentication are transforming how users access secure services through the use of facial recognition, fingerprints, voice analysis and other techniques.

But there is also growing sophistication in attack methods, including fake imagery, voices and fingerprints, which render these new technologies vulnerable.

As providers of financial, e-commerce and other business services race to adopt biometrics in order to make their customer experience as straightforward and seamless as possible, greater focus is needed to protect against exploits that defeat these new (and some not-so-new) technologies.

As the arms race between security defender and attacker continues, we call into question the meaning of identity – how do you ultimately prove you are who you say you are? Who should arbitrate? Where do the physical and digital worlds of identity need to converge?

We came together for networking, presentations from the experts, and live Q&As about the metaverse, going passwordless, digital identities, account takeovers, and more.

Speakers included:

Professor Steve Schneider, Director, Surrey Centre for Cyber Security – Spoke on sovereign identity, and how decentralised digital identity can provide passwordless login and give individuals control over their data.
Professor Carsten Maple, Professor of Cyber Systems Engineering, WMG, The University of Warwick, and Fellow, The Alan Turing Institute
Rob Solly, Director of Research Partners at Improbable and CEO/founder of Cosimmetry – Spoke about the growth of the metaverse as a collaborative platform (recognising its scale and impact!) and the security implications we will have to consider.
Paul Simmonds, CEO, Global Identity Foundation – Discussed why, if you want to fix a broken identity ecosystem, you better first understand why we’ve been unable to make it work in the first place.