A derived version of this article was published by the Mobile Ecosystem Forum on October 7, 2021.

Have you heard? Mobile is a big deal. The majority of the world’s population carries a mobile device, and there are billions of connected devices integrated throughout nearly every part of our daily life. Why does this insight matter? Putting it another way, mobile is the guiding light that leads enterprises down the path of commercial success. Commercial success requires The 3Cs: Connection, Communication, Commerce. One of the four core threads that connect these three stepping stones to commercial success is mobile; the other three are communications, content, and identity (aka personal information). Everyone in an enterprise must understand this, from the c-suite to the staffer. Why? Because today’s connected [mobile] individual is the point of everything along the customer journey. They are the point of discovery. The point of consideration. The point of sales/transaction. The point of engagement. The point of loyalty. Point of exit. And, at each point of engagement, mobile identity plays an irreplaceable role. We’re still early days in mobile identity, but the market is shaping and reshaping up quickly.

“We see the mobile device as playing an almost irreplaceable role in terms of this linkage between a physical person in live space, or meatspace, you might say, and the digital realm.” – Cameron D’Ambrosi, Managing Director, Liminal 2021 (MEF PD&I Working Group Guest Speaker, 2021)

Mobile Identity: A Pillar for Commercial Success

Mobile identity sits at the heart of most commercial experiences. Identity can help organizations know, with varying levels of assurance, who is on the other end of a device (aka “know your customer”); likewise, soon but not just yet, it will enable individuals to know the enterprise too (aka “know the sender”). The ability for enterprises and the connected individual to know, with absolute assurance (aka deterministic identity) or with varying degrees of assurance (aka probabilistic identity), who the human or entity is on the other end of a device is extremely important. When we have identity assurance, we can have transparency in our transactions, communications, and relationships. This transparency fosters trust, which in turn leads to lasting connections, effective communications, and commerce. Moreover, this transparency will allow organizations to better serve people at every stage along the customer lifecycle (acquisition, consideration, conversation, adoption, loyalty, and offboarding), while simultaneously meeting their contractual, legal and regulatory obligations and protecting themselves and their stakeholders from fraud and other cybercrime. With the systematic foundation of trust that mobile identity enables, a world of abundance can lay out our feet.

Mobile Ecosystem Forum PD&I Working Group

The Mobile Ecosystem Forum is a global big-tent trade body made of leading cross-sector organizations from around the world. Its mission is to help foster a healthy, responsible, mobile ecosystem, one where mobile can be used as an effective tool to bring social and commercial prosperity to every region, organization, and individual.

It is accomplishing this by engaging in a range of initiatives that generate insights, stimulate interaction, and make a positive impact. Much of the MEFs work happens at a grassroots level in its workgroups. For example, the Personal Data & Identity Working Group, chaired by Andrew Perkin-White, focuses on mobile identity, the emerging personal data economy, the growth and application of people-centric regulations (e.g. GDPR, CCPA), the annual MEF global trust study, and more. The working group meets monthly to discuss and prioritize the effort across all its initiatives.

MEF PD&I Working Group Guest Speaker

Periodically the working group invites a guest speaker to the monthly working group meeting. September 20, 2021, the group was fortunate enough to have Cameron D’Ambrosi, Managing Director, Liminal, join the meeting and share his thoughts on the state of the global identity infrastructure market ecosystem, both today and in the years to come.

During his prepared remarks, Cameron shared Liminal’s framework for evaluating identity infrastructure, the “Honeycomb.” He talked through the structure of the Honeycombs, how “anchor” identity solutions sit in the center, adjacent solutions fuse together to support use cases, and various other solutions specialize in the three types of data: deterministic, probabilistic, and self-managed, and their persistent or transitory states. He touched on a number of important topics, including,

• The Liminal “Identity Honeycombs” framework
• The three data types and their two stages
• Digital ID: A How, not a What
• Use Case examples
• Strategies for navigating the landscape
• Risk/reward management
• Identity orchestration
• And more

Watch Cameron’s Remarks on YouTube, click the image below

An Invitation To Lead

The conversation with Cameron went on much longer than what you heard in the recording above. Why? Because much of the content is reserved for MEF members. If you’re a MEF member, I encourage you to log in to the MEF site and listen to the engaging Q&A the working group members had with Cameron. If you’re not a member of the MEF, I encourage you to consider becoming one. Through the MEF, you can gain indispensable insight, interact with people, and make a difference that will benefit you and your company professionally and personally. An important thing to remember is that with membership in any community, including the MEF, like anything in life, is that you get out of it what you put in. The more you put into your relationship with the MEF and your fellow members, the more you can get out.

I hope you enjoyed this peek into the identity infrastructure marketplace. If you have thoughts and ideas as to where you think the marketplace is going, please do reach out. With the MEF, I’m working on a personal data & identity market assessment report. I’d love to connect with you, see MEF Personal Data & Market Assessment Project (Schedule Interview and Share Insights) to learn about the project, schedule an interview with me, or share your insights and resources.

00:00 - Introduction
00:08 - About MEF PD&I Working Group
00:28 - Intro guest speaker: Cameron D'mbrosi
01:02 - Handoff from Andrew Parkin-White
01:05 - About Liminal
03:19 - Quote: Digitial ID must be inclusive
03:54 - End Quote
03:58 - Introducing the "Identity Honeycombs"
04:10 - The Map: On solution positioning
05:17 - The Map: Data type color-coding
05:20 - Introducing the three data types
05:27 - Data type 1: First party deterministic
05:54 - Data type 2: Probabilistic
06:47 - Data type 2: individual self-managed
07:08 - Importance of data types to strategy
07:23 - Digital ID a How NOT a What
09:25 - Pulling the pieces together: FinTech ex.
11:58 - What it all means: Future of the market
13:38 - Mobile Identity & Device Intelligence
14:34 - Mobile has an irreplaceable role
14:50 - Mobile central to the consumer's life
16:15 - Kickoff Q&A
16:28 - Becker Q: Diff between ID and PI
16:44 - Personal data: synonym for identity
17:45 - Why this definition is important
18:28 - Linking the types of data
19:58 - On risk/reward balance with CX friction
23:13 - Orchestration is the key
26:04 - Wrap-up and call to action - Join MEF

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