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“It’s a positive step that the Online Safety Bill will now enforce pornography sites to verify identities to ensure users are over 18. It is no longer acceptable that anonymity online can allow users, particularly underage children, to freely access this content because they can’t be identified.

However, we must not stop here. There needs to be an easier way for organisations to verify identities that doesn’t compromise privacy, which has become essential in maintaining customer trust in services, loyalty to business and respect for customers. Customers have a right to access secure services without sacrificing their personally identifiable information (PII). Keeping that kind of valuable PII hidden further increases privacy as it makes it harder for fraudsters to access it.

To combat this, we need to take a more intelligent approach to answering the problem of digital identity online. The solution is two-fold. Firstly, it’s about knowing someone’s status, not their identity. By looking at technology such as behavioural biometrics, which considers the behavioural factors of an individual to authenticate them, businesses can help us re-establish trust in digital spaces. In addition, the public and private sector must work together to agree a shared framework to keep organisations accountable. Without this collaboration, businesses will be working from different rulebooks and add further complexity to an already difficult problem. This will require a huge shift in perception, but with the right education, businesses and government can lead a global effort to make the internet a safer resource for everyone.”