“Sixty one percent of UK businesses in a 2017 survey said that they now hold customer data online and forty six percent have identified cybersecurity breaches or attacks in the last 12 months.”1

As we move into a world where our lives are more connected online, we access products and services and interact with businesses, who then store our private, personal information. Our personal data, when connected to the internet,can be hacked. As we have seen in recent years, nobody is immune to data loss, hacking or phishing attacks. Not the NSA, not Hillary Clinton, not the 143 million citizens whose personal and financial data were stolen from Equifax.

No matter how robust the technical and security safeguards in place, ultimately, anyone who keeps personal data online is vulnerable to cyber threats.
Unfortunately, this generally means individuals no longer trust third parties to keep their personal data secure. Nor should you.

“only one fifth of the UK public report having trust and confidence in companies and organisations storing their personal information.”2

SelfKey has a different approach to personal data management and privacy. We are confident when we say we will never lose your data, because we will never store your data! With SelfKey, at all times, all of your data remains completely under your control. Better still, nobody will even know that your SelfKey exists, except those companies you give consent to access your data.

So how does SelfKey work?

Firstly, download your SelfKey identity wallet. This wallet is capable of accessing to your personal identity data stored in your personal device, such as a copy of your passport photo page, tax numbers and other unique identifiers.

When you create your wallet, a unique public/private cryptographic key pair is generated for you.

With public key cryptography, the public key is used to encrypt the document, but only the holder of the paired private key can decrypt the message. So, for example, if you wish to open a bank account you will need to provide the bank with a copy of your passport.

With SelfKey, instead of sharing a physical copy of this document, you will simply sign a digital copy of the passport photo page in your wallet using the bank’s public key and deliver it to the bank via the SelfKey network.

Because the passport information is cryptographically signed (encrypted), using the bank’s public key, it can only be decrypted once the bank applies its corresponding private key, which is known only to them.

To everyone else on the network, only the secure hash of your passport information is visible. If the bank tries to share your passport copy with another third party, the document would be unreadable to that third party.

You retain full control over your personal data whilst being able to safely and securely share that data with third parties of their choice.

By giving the individual control of their data at all times, SelfKey offers a solution to the ongoing problems of oversharing data and protecting that data once it has been shared.

Through the use of KEY tokens, SelfKey allows individuals to securely share certified identity documents with third parties for KYC purposes and purchase financial services in the SelfKey marketplace.

SelfKey is also helping to build a bridge to tomorrow by working with the Decentralized Identity Foundation (DIF) and through its collaborations with cryptography leaders such as Uport Consensys.

SelfKey is an identity EcoSystem designed to put you in control of your personal data, and allow you to apply instantly for financial services in a safe, secure manner. We invite you to read the SelfKey whitepaper for further details.

At SelfKey, we think individuals should own and control their data. Our products are specifically designed for individuals who feel like they’ve lost control of their personal information.

1 https://www.ipsos.com/ipsos-mori/en-uk/cyber-security-breaches-survey-2017
2 http://www.cbi.org.uk/news/full-speech-elizabeth-denham-on-cyber-security-and-data-protection/
Note: Purchasing SelfKey, a Self Sovereign Identity Token (known as “KEY”), should not be considered an investment, and it should not be purchased for speculative reasons.
The KEY token does not give its holder any right to profits, and it does not represent any ownership interest. It confers no ability to vote or manage. KEY is a digital asset that has value and utility solely within the SelfKey Ecosystem for the exchange of goods or services available on that ecosystem.