For the FIDO Alliance, the central constraint on digital identity is clear: Organisations and platforms must strengthen security without placing an additional burden on users. As digital services rapidly expand and become more sophisticated, online identity verification remains at a crossroads.
According to FIDO CTO Nishant Kaushik, the promise of trust in digital identity is easy to describe: Every person should be able to prove who they are or what they are entitled to without being forced to reveal more than necessary, give up choice or control, memorise fragile secrets, or repeat the same clunky onboarding process every time they encounter a new organisation.
“Businesses and public services should be able to verify trustworthy claims and engage with their customers quickly, securely, and at scale,” he said during a keynote at the inaugural FIDO Authenticate APAC conference in Singapore.
Kaushik noted that users don’t inherently trust a service or platform because it’s digital. Instead, trust comes from a fair user experience and clear privacy boundaries.
“What we’ve seen and learned is that trust is not a feature; it is an outcome. We cannot simply put together a set of technical capabilities and hope to achieve trust. It requires carefully designing systems around a set of principles that guide policy, governance, and implementation,” he said.
