Collaboration Brings New Solution To Mobile Wallets

As mobile wallets' popularity increases and cybersecurity attacks occur with exponential frequency and severity, innovation has come from a rarely seen source: information sharing across sectors.

Security industry competitors have joined forces to create the MIDAS Alliance, a unique group that is striving to create industry-wide collaboration for the greater good.

MIDAS, Mobile IDentity Authentication Standard, began with Experian, Facebanx and FICO and has quickly grown to a global membership organization with representatives from stakeholders all across the cybersecurity sphere.

Founders' Insights

Matthew Silverstone, Facebanx CEO, elaborated on his role within the alliance, "Providing a solution for mobile wallets that lets the customer choose from one or more of the following biometrics – face, voice, eye and fingerprint – is an idea that is going to be discussed within MIDAS."

He continued, "Providing the customer with a multifactor biometric authentication seems like a sensible solution."

Biometrics, physical identification that is unique to the mobile wallet owner, is just one area of security solutions that MIDAS hopes to employ going forward. Jonathan Williams, Experian director, explained the power of collaboration for creating innovation, "It is very important to create innovative solutions that improve customers' protection from fraud and are cost-effective enough to be able to be rolled out across the industry."

FICO Senior Director Brian Kinch commented on the power of collaboration found in MIDAS, "I believe this kind of information sharing is critical." He continued, "To prevent security breaches, we need to bridge the gap between what the regulators are seeking and what the financial services industry is doing."

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What MIDAS Intends To Do

According to the alliance, there is an "imminent need" for MIDAS. Because of upcoming banking standards, including changes outlined by the European Banking Authority and President Obama's outspoken desire for payment security, a cross-sector, multi-national alliance is an obvious solution.

Among the forthcoming changes that have been outlined, anonymity and irrelevance if stolen are top priority for future development in the cyber-transaction space. With this guidance, MIDAS intends to uphold an evolving definition of "strong authentication," citing the following seven factors as crucial for strong authentication:

• 1. "Must be mutually independent, i.e. the breach of one does not compromise the other(s);
• 2. "Should be non-reusable and non-replicable (except for inherence);
• 3. "Designed in such a way as to protect the confidentiality of the authentication data;
• 4. "Not capable of being surreptitiously stolen via the Internet;
• 5. "Something only the user knows, e.g. static password, code, personal identification number;
• 6. "Something only the user possesses, e.g. token, smart card, mobile phone;
• 7. "Something the user is, e.g. biometric characteristic, such as a fingerprint or face recognition."

Conclusively, MIDAS intends to build a universal system for cybersecurity and cyber-transactions that can be widely integrated and optimally secure.