Mike Cook, CEO of IDENTOS, sat down with me to share how his company is making digital trust and privacy accessible for patients, healthcare providers, payers, organizations, and connected devices. We also discussed the concept of “smart cities” and Mike shared his leadership lessons and tips for budding entrepreneurs.
Here is a sneak peek of our conversation:
Q: We are graduating to things like biometrics, fingerprints, facial scanning, and what have you. Tell us a little bit about what the pros and cons are. What are the conversations that are happening around this very important piece around verification of identity?
A: Verification of identity is a foundational component. I think that we are all familiar with the username and password kind of situation we have today. The average Joe has 120 accounts, usernames, and passwords that create significant security pressure on the system as a whole, because of password reuse and a number of natural human phenomenon that work against security. These notions of issuance of credentials are really key if we are looking for a kind of self-sovereign or blockchain identity solution where once you’ve been verified by a party, that credential can be issued and signed by an authoritative source and held by you and your phone. That allows you to be you for a number of parties who are capable of verifying the signature.
It’s a very cryptographically kind of supported technology. It’s not necessarily that the average person is going to understand what’s happening under the hood. You’re going to find, just as you carry your driver’s license in your wallet today, tomorrow you’ll be carrying a digital version of that in your phone that you build to show portions of it to people and not the entire face of it which contains all your personal information.
Identity verification is critical. What’s great about the emergent technology space and mobile devices is that they allow us to create a security posture surrounding these devices; the day-over-day improvements and their security to distribute the attack surface somewhat and rely more on that authentication at the edge. You can be trusted in more places with that credential as a result.
For more of our discussion, you can watch the whole Fireside Chat with Mike Cook, or listen to the podcast version, below.
To check out previous Fireside Chats and to make sure that you don’t miss any future updates, subscribe to our newsletter or follow us on YouTube, LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook or our podcast. If you enjoyed this episode, kindly leave a review on iTunes.
About Impetus Digital
Impetus Digital is the spark behind sustained healthcare stakeholder communication, collaboration, education, and insight synthesis. Our best-in-class technology and professional services ensure that life science organizations around the world can easily and cost-effectively grow and prosper—from brand or idea discovery to development, commercialization, execution, and beyond—in collaboration with colleagues, customers, healthcare providers, payers, and patients.