National digital identity and authentication for everyone in Finland - Nixu drives change with an open source solution

Nixu Corporation Press Release December 13, 2018 at 8.00 AM EET

Cybersecurity company Nixu, Suomen Tilaajavastuu and Digital Living International are creating a new digital authentication solution for the public and private sector in Finland. The goal is to ease people’s daily life as society digitalizes as well as to improve Finland’s competitiveness in the international markets.

Authentication is the Achille's heel of digital services

According to the Finnish Ministry of Finance, strong identification with current methods is a large annual expense for the state. Simultaneously, the number of authentication events is on the rise as services are digitalized. Finland has a large need to respond to the challenges of digital authentication, especially from the viewpoint of usability and costs.

A digital authentication pilot initiative, the Sandbox of Trust, offers a quick solution to this problem. The initiative creates a legally valid community in Finland that is open to all actors and that will create a mobile authentication app, SisuID. With this solution, citizens and foreigners can effortlessly login to digital services that demand normal and strong authentication.

Previous authentication initiatives in Finland have failed due to the lack of collaboration between sectors and industries. The community that is formed now welcomes all service providers.

“In the community model, pricing will be based on a fixed membership fee instead of a transaction-based fee. This covers the platform’s maintenance and development costs. This way, identification is no longer a business-limiting factor to anyone. On the contrary, it will enable business,” explains Pirkka Frosti from Digital Living International.

SisuID and effortless authentication with a smartphone

An authentication application widely utilized by the public and private sectors would mean a new and easy way of logging in to digital services and would even enable the replacement of passwords.

The solution also brings a concrete relief to the wallet, as the application can replace all plastic loyalty cards and permits. When a user can prove their identity with a mobile application, authorizations related to their digital identity can be verified in real-time from the service providers’ background systems.

Implementation by the end of 2019

“The Sandbox of Trust initiative creates the SisuID solution quickly with the help of pilot projects. Actors from both the private and public sectors are already involved in testing their requirements for the new authentication application,” says Joonatan Henriksson from Nixu. “We will still bring along a few actors who want to grow their own digital competitiveness quickly with a more user-friendly authentication.”

The source code of the solution is published as open source so other countries can also implement the digital identity and authentication solution cost-effectively as a corner stone of their own digital society.

Nixu Corporation

Further information:

  • Joonatan Henriksson, Head of Digital Business, Nixu
    mobile: +358 50 342 3472, email: joonatan.henriksson (at) nixu.com
  •  www.sisuid.com 
  • Press release published on July 16, 2018: www.nixu.com/release/nixu-developing-solution-digital-authentication-foreigners
     

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Nixu in brief:
Nixu is a cybersecurity services company on a mission to keep the digital society running. Our passion is to help organizations embrace digitalization securely. Partnering with our clients we provide practical solutions for ensuring business continuity, an easy access to digital services and data protection. We aim to provide the best workplace to our team of over 300 cybersecurity professionals with a hands-on attitude. With Nordic roots, but based in four continents, we serve enterprise clients worldwide. Nixu shares are listed on the Nasdaq Helsinki stock exchange.

www.nixu.com