Sovrin Foundation and Finland’s TrustNet Join Forces to Build a Trust Network for Distributed Personal Data Management


Salt Lake City, Sept. 07, 2017 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- The Sovrin Foundation and Finland’s TrustNet consortium announced the trial of a new decentralized identity network.

TrustNet will evaluate and base its pilot’s sandbox on Sovrin, a public distributed ledger purpose-built for self-sovereign identity. This will entail creation of a live Sovrin laboratory for Finnish companies and institutions to examine and test how self-sovereign identity will benefit the citizens of Finland and the members of the consortium. As well as exploring the technology aspects of decentralised identity, TrustNet will be examining potential business models, security and privacy implications, and national trust network governance structures.

“Finland’s TrustNet lab demonstrates how rapidly self-sovereign identity is progressing. By moving away from centralized identity, TrustNet is leading the way toward the next generation of Internet where privacy and security are the default, not the exception,” said Sovrin Foundation Chairman Dr. Phil Windley. “With Sovrin, people and organizations around the globe can, for the first time, have their own permanent, self-sovereign digital identity and begin to interact as peers with complete trust and privacy. Our collaboration with TrustNet will demonstrate the possibilities to world.”

The focus of TrustNet is the creation of new ways for people and organizations to share data in a secure and privacy-respecting manner. Instead of creating more centralized data silos, TrustNet uses a decentralized approach that puts people at the center of their interactions, and gives them control over their own data. This is known as ‘self-sovereign identity’.

Windley added, "Sovrin’s global public network for self-sovereign identity makes the TrustNet collaboration a natural one."

TrustNet builds on the MyData principles, a human-centered model for personal data management and processing and the Finnish MyData Alliance-wide interest to deploy networked multi-player pilots around personal data management.

“I’m proud we’re finally getting traction around MyData through mapping the broader personal data management idea onto a novel decentralized approach, which our expert team now prepares for commercial deployment,” said TrustNet project lead Harri Honko of Tampere University of Technology. “Our real-world pilots will test the promise of distributed ledger technologies as the new approach to endowing individuals with unprecedented control over and trust in their personal data.”

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About TrustNet
TrustNet is a research and pilot project for decentralised personal data management with consortium members across the Finnish digital services industry and three research organisations (Aalto University, University of Oulu and Tampere University of Technology). The project is a result of various discussions and efforts driven via MyData Alliance member meetings over 2016-2017 and is funded by Tekes, the Finnish Funding Agency for Innovation. Project starts in October 2017 with overall duration of 18 months. Public governance is actively tracking the project through their broad participation in steering of the project.

About The Sovrin Foundation
The international, non-profit Sovrin Foundation is guided by a constitutional Trust Framework that ensures its independence from government or industry influence and codifies its dedication to providing self-sovereign digital identity for all. The Sovrin network is operated by independent stewards and uses the power of a hybrid distributed ledger as a fast, private and secure framework for providing every person, organization, and connected device a trusted, permanent identity with which to transact online and operate securely.

Sovrin uses the open source Hyperledger Indy codebase sponsored by the Linux Foundation. This global, interoperable platform lets individuals and organizations take control over their digital identities and gives enterprises new solutions to complex challenges like KYC, authentication, access, privacy and more.

Learn more about the Trust Framework underlying the Sovrin network here. Follow us on Twitter: @SovrinID and #Sovrin

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A photo accompanying this announcement is available at http://www.globenewswire.com/NewsRoom/AttachmentNg/3807c161-6ff3-4727-9d84-6a0a38262c1d


            

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