Canadian mobile digital identity service to launch this fall

Categories : External News

Oct 21st, 2018 by Howard Solomon

A long-awaited Canadian mobile digital identity validation service supported by Canada’s biggest banks and telcos will launch this fall, with hopes it will be a big boost to the digital economy. Called Verified.Me, the service installs an app on a mobile device that confirms a user’s identity, allowing businesses and governments to immediately do transactions without demanding proof of identity.

The fall launch of the service was announced this week at the Identity North conference in Toronto by Andre Boysen, chief identity officer of Toronto-based SecureKey, which operates the network the service runs on. In addition to banks and telcos – who provide the identity confirmation side of transactions – Boysen hopes the federal and some provincial governments will quickly sign on as well.



“The concept is you can choose to create a digital identity from the trusted relationships you have, like your bank, telco or government. Then you can use it across the [digital] economy,” he told the conference. The potential for the solution is being explored by a number of organizations. At the conference officials from Ingenico Canada, part of an international company providing secure authentication and payment solutions, and Prodigy Ventures, a Toronto developer with experience in secure ID and mobility, demonstrated a solution to make it easier for a charitable organization to get donations from people on the go. The charity advertises for donations on a large digital screen in a mall or public place, with a QR code for a mobile device with a Verified.Me app to scan. The app confirms ID, makes a donation and emails a receipt to the donor. Other potential uses range from using the app to prove to a landlord you are a good risk to rent an apartment or opening a new bank account online.

Getting this to market, though, has taken longer than expected. In fact 12 months ago at last year’s Identity North conference backers were hoping it would be live either late 2017 or early this year. SecureKey made a big splash several months earlier at an IBM conference announcing the companies were working on the platform to enable secure digital identity and attribute sharing using Big Blue’s blockchain service.

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Canadian digital ID projects at centre of conference

Categories : External News

June 6th, 2018 by Howard Solomon.

In a few months two Canadian digital identity projects that could create a leap in online transactions in this country...

The B.C.-led project, which Ontario and the federal government are also working on, is officially called the Verifiable Organizations Network. As John Jordan explained in an interview, governments want to make it easier for business to do work with it for matters like verifying government issued licences and permits instead of using paper. The problem is creating and exchanging data in a trustworthy way. Jordan, who says he and others have been working on the problem for several years, said an initial solution used federated identity technologies. That allowed government departments to add services, but the platform couldn’t scale to a national level to handle tens of thousands of businesses.

Enter blockchain



Blockchain and public key infrastructure were the solutions. A blockchain is used to house public keys needed to verify signed government documents. So far the project is using .the Hyperledger Indy blockchain run by the not-for-profit Sovrin Foundation, an identity specialist. Ultimately, Jordan said, the platform may be run by a number of operators. Meanwhile work on a verifiable credentials wallet capable of handling large volumes of credentials is underway. “We’ll have a directory you can search or you can use an API [to a corporate application] to search every incorporated entity in B.C, and other provinces that join.” That will, we hope, start the ability of other services to add their permits and licences to it.” At some point it is hoped the federal government will add its supplier registry to the platform for the beta test. Because initially the project uses already publicly-accessed data, no login will be needed. Searching for a company will bring up its legal and business name. Beside the name will be a list of available documents about the company. There will be a ‘Verify This Credential” button. Click, the platform goes through the blockchain for the public key of the signed document, to prove it is currently active and the document’s source. Jordan said one business told him it could save weeks of delay in checking whether a supplier has the proper B.C. workers’ insurance coverage if the Org Book included so-called work-safe clearance letters issued by a government agency. A company could use the platform to verify online in seconds if a potential customer is actually a registered business. Ken McMillan, acting director of digital identity at Treasury Board of Canada, outlined to the conference the Sign In Canada project. “The is to create an ecosystem where we have different applications co-existing, where you can login with your Facebook or Google [credentials], depending on the application.” For high-risk credentials like that a user may be allowed access to a limited amount of information. Do access more sensitive information a user might need a digital ID from a province (which, as the issuer of birth certificates really knows who you are), a bank or a telco.

Ken McMillan

“The point is by driving many possible paths to that single identity we’re being open-ended. We’re allowing that technology can change,” McMillan said. As an example of the multiple ways residents can sign in for a service, people wanting to access their Canada Revenue Agency tax files can use a CRA-issued credential, or SecureKey’s Concierge service, which allows people to the same username and password from their bank. SecureKey eventually will make Concierge part of its new Verified.Me mobile identification service. That too, could be part of Sign In Canada, McMillan said in an interview. Having multiple ways to authenticate future-proofs the architecture.

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ITWC

Two upcoming government projects show future for digital ID in Canada

Categories : External News

March 22nd, 2018 by Howard Solomon.

Governments are tremendous issuers of paper needed by businesses which they regularly need access to, ranging from licences to reports. But with everything being digitized there’s demand to improve that access. However, there are two problems governments have been struggling with for years: Verifying digital documents haven’t been altered and verifying user identities.



At this week’s Identity North conference in Toronto, ITWorldCanada.com learned of two digital identity experiments about to start which, along with many others coming, aim to put the federal, provincial, territorial and municipal government closer to a digital economy:

—The first will start shortly when British Columbia launches a beta test of what it for the time being calls TheOrgBook, a service that initially will give access to business incorporation documents. Why? So a business or a government department can quickly have evidence that a potential partner or supplier is legally incorporated.

Ultimately the service hopes to add dozens of other government-issued digital licences and permits to be searched. Perhaps even law societies and professional organizations will also participate so the public can verify the professional credentials of members. John Jordan, executive director for services strategy in the office of British Columbia’s CIO and the project lead, hopes one province and the federal government will join the Org Book shortly;

John Jordan, B.C. government



—The second is a federal proof of concept project called Sign In Canada, a unified login authentication service to start in the fall. The proof of concept involved using a digital credential from an unnamed participating province to interact with either Canada Revenue or the department of employment and social development. Ultimately the goal is to make it easier for people to log into the roughly 100 federal portals using a range of authentications for a variety of services. Social media login credentials to access to simple government services may be acceptable, but tougher credentials may be needed to access personal information.

These projects are aimed at solving different problems but ultimately the goal is the same: To give individuals and organizations faster access to government services, as well as enable them to work with each other. A business, for example, may need the ability to show another business a government-issued digital permit. So interoperability, project leaders say, is always on their minds. The solution to some of interoperability issues for both the public and private sectors will become clearer when the Digital Identity and Authorization Council of Canada (DIACC) finalizes its Pan Canadian Trust Framework. The framework will outline rules to identify, authenticate, and authorize users to access resources across public and private organizations. However, while some initial components will be issued in September for comment, the final version will be complete in 202

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ITWC

Announcing the Launch of our New Website

Categories : Corporate Achievements

Wednesday, March 01, 2017 by Gabriel K. B.

Conet-Tech’s IT department is pleased to announce the launch of the corporate brand new website! After two months of hard work and dedication, we are delighted to officially announce the launch on March 01, 2017. The new site launch is available and the URL is www.conet-tech.com

Our goal with this new website is to provide our visitors an easier way to learn about Conet-Tech’s services and solutions and also to allow the visitor to browse information based on their own choice. The new website is interactive and gives better access to About Us, Product, Solution, Technology, Methodology, Custom Development, Mobile Development, E-Commerce, UI/UX Design, Outsourcing, Clients, Careers, Contact, Quotes Request etc. Our current and prospective clients will find useful information about our services on the homepage of our website. The case studies will highlight the projects we have completed and outline the value created for each client as a result.

Amongst the new features the site contains integrated social media buttons for RSS, Facebook, Twitter and Linkedin to foster improved communication with the clients. We will be constantly updating our content with helpful information or company announcements in the News section.

We hope you find the new website with a fresh look, easy to access information in any device and we also wish to establish this portal as a source of information for those who visits our site.

We would also like to thank our amazing staff at Conet-Tech who donated their time and energy to make this site what it is.

For any questions, suggestions, feedback or comments, please E-mail us at contact@conet-tech.com.


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Gabriel K. B.
Conet-Tech

Dataiku DSS 4.0 helps organizations manage enterprise data science

Categories : External News

Saturday, February 25, 2017 by Richard Harris

Dataiku Data Science Studio (DSS), has announced the release of Dataiku DSS 4.0, which introduces new functionalities that improve the production, development, and management of enterprise data science projects. The latest version of the team-based enterprise data science platform streamlines collaboration across large teams, improves large customer-base segmentation and scoring, and introduces compliance and regulatory capabilities, in addition to other new features that bring scalable data science to any organization, from small startup to global enterprise.

As an organization grows, the demand on data teams to deliver data driven solutions grows as well. In turn, this underscores the need for a solid data science infrastructure for the production, analysis, and management of any sized data science project. This is where Dataiku’s scalable data science platform comes into play. The platform enables all of the members of data science teams, from the spreadsheet user to the machine learning expert to the IT and data engineer, to collaboratively leverage the most powerful data science and machine learning tools to build and deliver their own data products more efficiently.

Key Features

Streamlined Collaboration Across Large Teams - For a global organization, it can be difficult for team members around the world to easily communicate, especially while collaborating on multiple, complicated projects that leverage different tools, technologies, and data sources. The platform expands the ability to scale the work for large teams by introducing new dashboards, seamlessly integrating with 3rd party collaboration software solutions, including Slack, HipChat, and Github, and much more. Additionally, new visual machine learning libraries not only shorten time to insight but also open up the ability for growing teams to include machine learning experts as well as beginners in the data science process.

Effectively Scoring and Segmenting for a Large Customer Base - Effectively targeting, scoring, and segmenting customers in large organizations is often a tedious task. Dataiku 4.0 can handle customer segmentation and scoring for large organizations, reducing IT workload and limiting unnecessary data movement. Furthermore, Spark in-memory technology in Dataiku 4.0 increases runtime efficiency by enabling users to rebuild large flows by starting a minimal number of Spark jobs at a time.

Compliance and Regulatory Efficiency - As organizations turn to data science for more customer critical needs, there is a need to match compliance requirements in mission-critical industries such as finance, insurance, pharmaceutical research, aerospace/defense, and so on. By adding features to trace data transformations or audit changes, Dataiku DSS now provides comprehensive and efficient compliance and regulatory tracking.

“With this latest release of Dataiku DSS we’ve focused on addressing how organizations can most efficiently scale their analytics capabilities,” said Florian Douetteau, CEO of Dataiku. “The secret is to streamline the movement of information within an organization while reducing the movement of data itself. After all, building data products and running data science driven departments at scale is an inherently complex operation for any organization - big or small. Dataiku’s goal is to help these organizations keep growing their data-centric activities while maintaining this complexity at bay.”

(source: https://appdevelopermagazine.com/news)
Saturday, February 25, 2017 by Richard Harris

AirMap secures $26M to become the air traffic controller for drones

Categories : External News

Saturday, February 25, 2017 by RICHARD HARRIS, Executive Editor

AirMap announced a $26 million Series B funding round led by Microsoft Ventures, with additional participation from Airbus Ventures, Qualcomm Ventures (the investment arm of Qualcomm Incorporated), Rakuten, Sony, Yuneec, and existing investors General Catalyst and Lux Capital. The new investment brings their total funding to more than $43 million.

The Series B funding round will bring AirMap’s airspace management platform and Unmanned aircraft Traffic Management (UTM) solutions to new markets worldwide, as they opens offices in Berlin, Germany and at the NASA Ames Research Center in Mountain View, California.

“The strategic partners participating in our Series B financing reflect the diversity of the drone ecosystem and the potential of drones to benefit every sector of our economy,” said AirMap CEO Ben Marcus, who also serves as the industry co-chair for the FAA/industry Unmanned Aircraft Safety Team. “Very soon, millions of drones will fly billions of flights. This is a future that depends on safe, autonomous drone operations at scale. AirMap’s technology will make this future possible, allowing the drones of today, and the autonomous drones of tomorrow, to take flight.”

Millions of drones and hundreds of drone manufacturers and developers rely on the platform to access and share the data they need to fly safely in low-altitude airspace. AirMap’s data and services are embedded into drones, ground control stations, and flight apps by many drone makers, such as DJI, Intel, senseFly, 3DR, and Aeryon Labs - expanding the reach of their technology and solutions throughout the entire drone ecosystem.

Their regulatory and technological framework will facilitate data exchange and air traffic control for drones, and eventually, flying cars. More than 125 airports use AirMap’s airspace management dashboard to open surrounding airspace to drones, view past and current drone flights, accept digital flight notices, and communicate with drone operators. The platform also provides solutions for geofencing, remote identification of drones, and sophisticated in-flight deconfliction.

(source: https://appdevelopermagazine.com/news)
Saturday, February 25, 2017 by RICHARD HARRIS, Executive Editor