Ep. 9 Fraud, Identity Theft, Federal Systems

May 17, 2022

It is important to understand some of the identification options for federal technology leaders. That is why we have Wes Turbeville from ID.me in the studio today.

Years ago, McDonald’s had a sign in front of each restaurant that said, “Millions and millions sold.” It would be fair to appropriate this tagline to the world of your digital identity. That is because in 2017 147 million Americans in Equifax has personal data stolen. Oh, let us not forget the twenty-two million for the Office of Program Management and the fifty million from recent T-Mobile breaches.

Traditionally, identification started with a username and password. It has gotten to the point that so much personally identifiable information is floating on the Internet that major companies have initiated programs to eliminate this old-school way of authentication.

"We issue portable, trusted digital identity credentials for our users. And we do this in accordance with the NIST standards"

Wes Turbeville, Id.me Tweet

The Wall Street Journal recently had an article showing industry leaders like Apple, Google, and Microsoft are working on ways to authenticate without passwords. This fact alone should cause federal technology leaders to widen the discussion of identity management to companies like ID.me.

These giant tech companies may be responding to the increase in credential theft, especially using targeted “phishing” scams. Zscaler recently published a research report showing phishing attempts in the government sector rose by 110% between 2020 and 2021.

The interview with Wes Turbeville gives understandable explanations about NIST standards for identity management as well as anecdotes about identity management from federal agencies and major banks.

If you enjoyed this podcast, you may want to listen to episode #6 Overcoming Challenges to Federal Cloud Transition