Establishing one’s online identity is essential to more and more aspects of modern life. Banks are now required to conduct ‘know your customer’ checks for even the simplest of transactions. However, the current solutions are clunky and unreliable; for example, many banks still fall back on requiring a customer to first visit a branch when signing up. The current system involves the collection, transmission and storage of high volumes of personal and sensitive information. That creates greater risks of data theft, as seen in recent major data breaches such as the breach of customer IDs collected from NSW club patrons and the 2022 breach of Optus customer identity data. In order to address this, the Australian Government is setting up a digital ID system as part of its cyber security strategy
If successfully implemented, a digital ID system should deliver the following benefits:
- Convenience: making digital and online transactions
easier and more secure - Security: reducing the customer data that organisations
need to collect and store - Privacy: giving individuals have greater control over
what data they provide and to whom.
However, designing and implementing a suitable solution at national scale is a complex problem – one that requires understanding technology, making it useful and ensuring it is secure. This is why MDR Security has been involved in working on this topic since 2021.
We have been actively involved in providing submissions to the Government as it consulted on development of the system – read our submissions here: