The project is under the supervision of a new association, the Trust Protocol Association, established last January as an independent, not-for-profit membership organization, headquartered in Geneva, Switzerland
Geneva, Switzerland – May 22, 2020 – The purpose of the Trust Protocol Association is to establish a new Trust Protocol for the Internet combining traditional Cryptographic Trust Models with distributed blockchain ledgers creating a new Global Trust platform.
The mission of the Association is to create an ecosystem of governmental, technology and business partners, each representing a node with the possibility to have multiple nodes per country.
Blockchain-based solutions aim to override the need for a central authority by distributing information previously held in a centralized repository across a network of participating nodes. While Blockchain is not owned by one individual or organization, anyone with an internet connection (and access, in the case of private Blockchains) can make use of it, help maintain and verify it. When a transaction is made on a Blockchain, it is added to a group of transactions, known as ‘blocks”. Each block of transactions is added to the database in a chronological, immutable chain. Each block is stamped with a unique cryptographic code, which ensures that records are not counterfeited or changed. The Blockchain approach lacks legal validity in most jurisdictions, which only recognize the digital signatures as equally valid that manuscript signatures when generated using traditional PKI technology.
The Trust Protocol Association is working with a number of members in USA, Asia MEA and Europe to deploy a fully compliant Trusted Health Passport using the WIShelter Version 2, a new application in the WISeID App ecosystem, designed to remediate risks during the global COVID-19 lockdown period. Using their digital identity secured by WISeKey, users will be able to geo-localize other certified users and stablish secure communications. If needed, the app allows users to prove to local authorities that they are respecting the stay at home recommendations. To ensure the data privacy, each user’s Personal Identifiable Information is kept encrypted and never disclosed without their consent.
WIShelter app is based on WISeID, WISekey’s Digital Identity platform and combines in a unified solution a suite of web services and mobile applications:
- The WISeID Account: a digital identity with a unique credential that can be used to access all of WISeKey’s services and other affiliated services
- A Digital Certificate: offers strong authentication and digital signatures which can be also used to protect users’ email and communication during Teleworking
- A Personal Encrypted Vault: provides secure storage of confidential information, including the medical details
The new features of the WIShelter Version 2 include a full health digital certificate that is imported into the App by connecting it to the medical record of the patient issued by a bona fide qualified health certification program on which Doctors and Medical Facilities can join.
The App’s secure QR Code provides access to the user’s WISeID Health Card. The QR Code is displayed in three colors:
– Green: the person is healthy
– Yellow: the person’s health is compromised
– Red: the person has a health problem
The WISeID Health Card includes important medical details like blood type, allergies, and other medical conditions, and can be enriched with digital health certificates, as it’s the case of the result of an official COVID-19 test.
This simple method to display the Health Card could allow law enforcement and other public services to apply controls during the de-escalation phase of the pandemic.
All health details are encrypted and linked to the user’s identity, represented by a Digital Certificate. Encrypting this data is important to protect user’s confidential information and ensuring that the user is staying up-to-date with its health credentials, and is in compliance with all privacy requirements, like the European General Data Protection Regulation (Directive 95/46/EC), known as GDPR, the primary law regulating how companies protect EU citizens’ personal data.
WISeKey is a fully Qualified Trust Service Provider (TSP) under eIDAS, the updated EU regulations dealing with trusted eID and electronic transactions and Webtrust.ORG.
WISekey is currently working with several governments and health organizations to add functionalities to the WIShelter app such as the ability for users to upload and digitally certify the results of their COVID-19 test. These functionalities will allow local governments to enable healthy/immured persons to safely return to their jobs thus reduce the economic impact of the epidemic while protecting the high-risk population by controlling the spread of this infectious disease.
For almost two decades, WISeKey has contributed to the design and implementation of global standards for the internet’s long-missing identity layer: decentralized, point-to-point exchange of information about people, organizations, or things – enabled by blockchain and certified by cryptographic Root of Trust. WISeKey’s technology, products and services can be used by individuals and organizations.
To that effect, WISekey has launched an enhanced version of WISeID, adding easy to use strong authentication and email security capabilities that can remediate threats like phishing, ransomware or identity theft. Strong Authentication is a mechanism able to enhance security by complementing the traditional username/password access to online services with additional security factors, like biometry, hardware tokens and one-time-passwords. Additionally, secure eMail techniques allow confidential messages to be exchanged encrypted, and to affix a “digital signature” to the outgoing email, ensuring the recipient that the message comes from a genuine person and that has not been manipulated in the way.
About WISeKey
WISeKey (NASDAQ: WKEY; SIX Swiss Exchange: WIHN) is a leading global cybersecurity company currently deploying large scale digital identity ecosystems for people and objects using Blockchain, AI and IoT respecting the Human as the Fulcrum of the Internet. WISeKey microprocessors secure the pervasive computing shaping today’s Internet of Everything. WISeKey IoT has an install base of over 1.5 billion microchips in virtually all IoT sectors (connected cars, smart cities, drones, agricultural sensors, anti-counterfeiting, smart lighting, servers, computers, mobile phones, crypto tokens etc.). WISeKey is uniquely positioned to be at the edge of IoT as our semiconductors produce a huge amount of Big Data that, when analyzed with Artificial Intelligence (AI), can help industrial applications to predict the failure of their equipment before it happens.
Our technology is Trusted by the OISTE/WISeKey’s Swiss based cryptographic Root of Trust (“RoT”) provides secure authentication and identification, in both physical and virtual environments, for the Internet of Things, Blockchain and Artificial Intelligence. The WISeKey RoT serves as a common trust anchor to ensure the integrity of online transactions among objects and between objects and people. For more information, visit www.wisekey.com.
About the Trust protocol Association
The purpose of the Trust Protocol Association (the Association) is to establish a new Trust Protocol for the Internet by combining traditional Cryptographic Trust Models with permissioned Blockchain transactions through strong authentication provided by the OISTE WISeKey Root of Trust, and create a new Global Trust platform and an ecosystem of governmental, technology and business partners, each representing a certification node with the possibility of having multiple certifications nodes per country. The Association promotes the use of Blockchain technologies internationally, facilitate the rapid adaptation and on-boarding of Blockchain-based solutions, foster stronger collaboration between the public, private and academic sectors.
https://trustprotocolassociation.org/
About OISTE FOUNDATION
Founded in Switzerland in 1998, OISTE was created with the objectives of promoting the use and adoption of international standards to secure electronic transactions, expand the use of digital certification and ensure the interoperability of certification authorities’ e-transaction systems.
The OISTE Foundation is a not for profit organization based in Geneva, Switzerland, regulated by article 80 et seq. of the Swiss Civil Code. OISTE is an organization in special consultative status with the Economic and Social Council of the United Nations (ECOSOC) and belongs to the Not-for-Profit constituency (NPOC) of the ICANN. http://www.oiste.wisekeydemo.com/.
Mission: transfer the control and management of technologies dealing with digital identities to neutral authorities working for the public interest.
Vision: an Internet where users engage in online transactions and communications under systems of digital identity management that offer robust protection against fraud and theft, while protecting the fundamental right to privacy.
Company Contact:
Dourgam Kummer
Foundation Council Member
dourgam.kummer@oiste.wisekeydemo.com
