We are proud to announce that Wolf & Company Principal Ryan Rodrigue and his team were highlighted for their contribution to the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) and Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) Digital Identity Tech Sprint. Ryan and his fellow members on Team Heimdall were honored with the “Effectiveness/Impact” highlight for their proposed solution to the various difficulties behind digital identity proofing.
Team Heimdall was tasked with the challenge of finding a “scalable, cost-efficient, risk-based solution to measure the effectiveness of digital identity proofing to ensure that individuals who remotely (i.e., not in person) present themselves for financial activities are who they claim to be.”
Ryan collaborated with fellow experts Patrick Curry, Casey Jennings, Rob Leslie, Stephen Ritter, Greg Woolf, and Lisa Zeimetz. Focusing on finding a realistic and scalable solution, Team Heimdall competed against seven other high-profile teams with participants selected from over 200 applicants.
Ryan and his team came away with a workable solve that could see potential implementation. Identity proofing is separate from user authentication – it’s the process of tying a user account to an actual living person. Team Heimdall proposed a solution that incorporates existing international standards for Natural Person Identifiers (NPIs), which persist outside of any specific database and are needed to track fraud and synthetic identities. The team also described a technical implementation where a decentralized network of financial institutions can poll each other – in a secure, privacy preserving manner – for any indications that an NPI is involved in fraud.
The team continues to work alongside FinCEN and the FDIC to bring these ideas to reality.
