The Eident service provides both managed ID and business process improvement, in that it allows companies to move more transactions online, said George Evers, head of solution design at TrustAssured, the RBS business unit responsible for managed PKI services.
Evers said all major banks in the UK manage digital identities for their customers to transfer funds using the Banks Automated Clearing System, but RBS has gone a step further, developing a generic set of rules enabling any business community to carry out B2B e-commerce based on its PKI infrastructure, which was supplied by RSA Security Inc.
He said TrustAssured has already been selling ID management services to established communities such as banks around Identrus and BACS, the pharmaceutical sector around Secure Access For Everyone, or SAFE, but he said Eident now allows it to actually build new communities, which can start trading online, digitally signing contracts and so on in the knowledge that digital identity is being provided and vouched for by RBS.
TrustAssured comes into competition with a variety of entities. Firstly there are the software providers such as RSA and Entrust, then the managed service providers such as BT and CyberTrust, though we’re actually using RSA’s software and CyberTrust are hosting our service, he said.
The big difference is that in neither camp do the participants actually vouch for the identity of the person carrying out the transaction, and don’t issue trust in the way that banks do when they give you a credit card.
RBS offers two pricing models. Companies can pay per identity issued, signing up for a minimum of three years in which they pay about GBP 125 ($228) for the first year and roughly half of that for each of the following two years. Alternatively, they can pay per transaction, in which case the percentage paid depends on the type and size of the transaction.
