The Organizational Digital Identity and Telecom Verifiable Credential: Governance Model and Management’report presents a comprehensive framework for governing, vetting, and sanctioning the use of verifiable credentials representing Organizational Digital Identities and their associated Organizational Attributes within the telecommunications ecosystem.
Trust in enterprise and organizational communications has been severely undermined by fraudulent and spoofed telephone numbers. Enabling organizations to represent their identity through verified, cryptographically protected digital credentials allows legitimate businesses to convey who they are with confidence, so that their identity can be authenticated by telecom networks and presented to end users with assurance that they are communicating with the real organization.
Organizational Digital Identities already exist in the public domain, and this framework demonstrates a model for sanctioning their use within telecom, ensuring that only trusted, governance-backed credentials are authorized for identity assertions for customer onboarding, call authentication, messaging authentication, and service digital service interactions.
By enabling telecom providers to use cryptographically verifiable credentials for authenticating organizational entities, this model enhances trust, security, and transparency across communications networks. It also provides a foundation for interoperability with existing frameworks such as STIR/SHAKEN and Rich Call Data (RCD), supporting industry and regulatory efforts to mitigate spoofing, robocalls, and identity fraud.
Furthermore, the framework outlines how telecom-specific verifiable credentials can be governed and issued by carriers to support telecom-specific attributes, such as telephone-number right-to-use and service authorization, which can be used to further enhance call and message authentication, validate authority during number porting, and help prevent SIM-swap and other telecommunications fraud.