The Digital ID Directory: Ubisecure

We recently sat down with Simon Wood, Group CEO of Digital Identity leader Ubisecure to get a better understanding of its mission, value proposition, and message for the UK market.

Tell us about your company.

Ubisecure provides highly feature-rich Identity management software and cloud services. When people think about IAM (Identity & Access Management), they normally think about internal user IAM use cases, like employee access to enterprise applications. Ubisecure is different – we specialise in external Digital ID user use cases, like customers, consumers, partners, contractors and even organisations (as an Identity domain). 

Enterprises and government organisations use our Identity management solution to add security and convenience functionality to their web and enterprise applications. Functions like our Single Sign-On, Identity data protection, delegated authority and administration help organisations provide much better user experience and also reduce, or in some cases eliminate, manual administration costs.

We were founded in Finland in 2002, but today we have presence across Europe. Now, we have a definite focus on the UK, where we see an immediate need for Digital Identity data to be secured, and for organisations to start better utilising the many underdeveloped opportunities that embracing digital Identity brings.

What is your value proposition – how do you specifically help a customer? What sort of problems do you tend to get called in to help with?

Ubisecure has many years of experience both driving and implementing Identity standards, and understanding how digital Identity can be utilised to the benefit of both the organisation and the individual. We are usually involved in Identity projects that have large scale deployments. 

The range of problems solved with a good Customer IAM solution is wide reaching, but recurring problems include:

• To convert anonymous, casual website visitors to known, active registered users
• To give customers a single Identity for all connected applications and accounts
• To connect external Identity providers to applications, including social, enterprise, mobile or verified digital identities, for registration and Identity profile enrichment
• To offer stronger security to customers than just passwords 
• To implement complex multi-tier authorisation workflows
• To minimise Identity data silos and consolidate and normalise data in a secure directory(s)
• To replace legacy IAM solutions with a modern API-first solution
• Ultimately, to get applications to market faster and give your customers a secure, better experience

Do you have any named customers or case studies on your website we could link to at this point? If so, can you give a brief commentary on what that project showcases about your work?

Finnish Government The nationwide Identity management system for Finnish organisations and citizens uses the Ubisecure Identity Platform. The platform enables the strong identification of individuals and organisations, and allows organisations and citizens to delegate roles and functions to other organisations and users as part of their digital interactions with government services. The system comprises of approximately 500k user IDs, 400k organisations and 100+ government services, and delivers a massive 99% reduction in cost against the pre-digitalisation costs. Government departments using the system include the Tax Office, Social Security Institution, Pensions, Customs, Police, Unemployment Fund, the State Treasury and the Ministry of Defence.

S-Group An €11bn Baltic retailer group that owns a number of supermarkets, hypermarkets, restaurants, hotels, gas stations, financial, and insurance services and brands – wanted to place digital Identity at the centre of its digital transformation initiative. Specifically, it wanted to connect all applications and services across all organisations to a single consumer Identity, and to rethink how Identity can transform the customer experience. Ubisecure’s Identity Platform provided S-Group with:

• Registration and login using social, business and S-Group’s accepted strong identities
• Workflows for situational multi-factor authentication (step-up auth) and authorisation based on profile
• Single-sign on (SSO) across all group applications and services
• Personalised customer journeys based on single identities, such as automatic application of coupons based on known Identity profile attributes
• Customers with 24/7 self-service Identity data management

What is your Digital Identity story, in a sentence: why would a buyer need to work with you now?

That’s pretty easy: Customers and citizens have more Digital Identities than ever before, we need to provide services that reduce fraud, protect Identity data and use digital Identity to enhance, not hinder, customer journeys and experiences with your applications and services. 

Do you have a particular public sector angle you also want to highlight for us?

Definitely, and we can sum that up in two words, ‘expertise’ and ‘experience’. We have deployed large scale, both citizen- and organisation-based Identity management systems in Finland. We have just won a major government contract in Sweden based on our experience in this sector, and started to win our first local government contracts in the UK. 

The UK doesn’t need to have a national ID to be successful, incidentally. In fact, the most successful programmes we’ve seen in the Nordics are not always based around a national ID, but by embracing the enhanced security, anti-fraud, and customer experience enhancement opportunities offered by digital Identity in general.

Finally, if we come back in 12 months from now to refresh your profile in the Digital ID Directory, what would you like to be able to say you’d achieved or progressed in the intervening time?

Commercially, we’d like to have built out our partner network to include some high-profile government service suppliers. 

We’d like to have built on our early UK local government successes with larger, impactful national projects. 

We’d also like to have contributed to the education and understanding that digital Identity benefits for organisations and citizens can be achieved now – the technology, solutions and expertise are available from organisations like Ubisecure and our partners.

Thanks – and good luck!

Go here for Ubisecure’s entry in The Digital ID Directory.