A new alliance is preparing to stir up the market for login services with a master key for many web services. Verimi has teamed up with the Fraunhofer Institute for Applied and Integrated Security (AISEC). Both want to combine their concepts submitted for the “Secure Digital Identities” competition of the Federal Ministry of Economics (BMWi) into a “Germany ID” (DeID). The aim is to develop a uniform standard for secure digital identities in Germany and Europe and to stand up to the data-hungry ID services from Facebook and Google, for example.

The partners want to advance the project as part of the BMWi’s innovation competition Showcase Secure Digital Identities (SDI). Verimi is supported by companies such as the Allianz Insurance Group, Axel Springer, Bundesdruckerei, Daimler, Deutsche Bank, Deutsche Telekom and Lufthansa and has previously led the “People-ID” consortium at SDI. The AISEC, which 2019 started the open source service Re: claimID, was previously represented there with “SDIinNRW”.

More than “single sign-on” Under the umbrella of DeID, around 35 partners from research, Economy and public administration at BMWi for the planned three-year implementation phase. In addition to the cities of Bochum and Bonn and the companies Governikus, Procilon and the Sparkasse finance portal, according to Verimi, this also includes 1 & 1 Mail & Media GmbH, which belongs to United Internet and operates the webmail services GMX and Web.de. The parent company is also involved in the local Verimi alternative NetID, for example with the TV stations ProSiebenSat.1 and RTL. Axel Springer announced in April that it would be represented in both German login alliances in the future.

In addition to a “single sign-on” service, So that users do not have to constantly create new accounts with associated passwords, DeID is intended to bring together numerous locally, distributed and centrally aligned identity solutions for everyday-relevant applications in many sectors across different levels of trust. Initially, pilot projects are planned in North Rhine-Westphalia and Hesse, for example with administrative services, the e-prescription as well as with banks and insurance companies (account opening).

According to AISEC expert Marian Margraf, the main challenge at DeID is this to establish an ecosystem for electronic identification (eID). This must meet “high security requirements” and still be easy to use by all citizens and also with a smartphone. To do this, it is necessary to take into account the security functions of various current mobile devices and to integrate data protection in a transparent and easily traceable manner.

Uniform standards for the overarching acceptance of digital identities are required by all application partners from business and industry the public sector, says Verimi Managing Director Roland Adrian for the project. A broad acceptance for an online ID card is also “the urgently needed catalyst for digitization in Germany”. According to observers, German login services have so far not been able to make up much ground in competition with their competitors from Silicon Valley. The SDI jury is expected to decide on the award of state funding by mid-December.

(vbr)