By Pablo Yannone Sancho, Journalist at GLTH
Viky Manaila is bound to build trust over the Internet in digital transactions. This goal is kind of a background that is present in the current point of her professional career: nowadays, she is Trust Services Director within Intesi Group, an Italian private company in the field of trust services around eIDAS regulation. She also holds the position of President for Cloud Signature Consortium, a global organization covering aspects related to digital signatures, providing standards with an open-source license covering all geographical regions.
“Trust” is much more than a word for Viky. It is a door for many possibilities as it allows us to explore new technologies without fear. “We are living in a tremendous time when there are a lot of possibilities, but we don't take the most advantages from them,” she expresses.
Viky sees this within the legal sector, where lawyers, when dealing with compliance or managing relevant information, need to be “a thousand percent sure that something that is new is working extremely well and is compliant with legal requirements.” These words make even greater sense for Manaila in terms of being an Advisor at the GLTH, where she can participate in the creation of this trust around legal tech.
A little bit about Viky's background
Viky's everyday mantra has something to do with everything we saw of her previously: “Do whatever you can to make the world we live in a better one, piece by piece, and day by day.”
The future can be built, but the past is already done, and under the scope of Viky, “it was perfect as it was.” The future, however, could help her and others to get some ideas. After all, it would be traveling—something that Viky loves particularly—and gaining new knowledge about different cultures and people.
“There are many amazing places,” says Viky. The most recent countries she visited and enjoyed a lot were Japan, Georgia, and Armenia. About Georgia, she would remark on the people and their spirit to “work together, to collaborate, to make their country a better place for them.”
It seems like Viky has many sources of inspiration to follow her everyday mantra. She also knows where to go when she needs to create a new outfit: Seinfeld and Sex and the City.
What is legal tech for Viky?
“Legal tech should be looked at from different angles,” begins Viky. What is her angle? Viky's main angle is Identity and how to address different geographical regions with different types of identities. This is something truly significant when signing legal documents. How can that be used or how can that be implemented?
“We must be sure that in 20 years from now, we will be able to open the document, read the document, and validate the signatures,” claims Viky. Besides, the properties of the document, such as all the parts, have to be preserved over a long period of time.
Legal tech has many angles, and so does Identity. Digital Identity, for instance: how can companies ensure the privacy and security of users? What is the first step?
“Assess the need for identity verification,” responds Viky. “At what level, at which point do you need to know who is behind the Internet? Because not all transactions have the same legal value, and not for all transactions you need to know the identity. There should be a balance between what you need to know and for what purpose.”
There are many ways of identity verification you can implement, and the common factor is that “you should assure privacy and security,” remarks Viky.
An innovation that is taking place right now in Europe and has come to disrupt the process of Digital Identity verification is the European Digital Identity Wallet. This allows individuals to show their identity when, for example, buying a flight ticket.
“When I go to the airport with the boarding pass, the airport and the airline should know exactly my identity. Thanks to the European Digital Identity Wallet, all those verifications can happen very easily,” claims Viky.
This implementation enables shortening identity processes, from “the highest level of identity verification based on your personal identity data” to a simple verification that I am the person who claimed to be based on email or phone number.
The European Digital Identity Wallet not only enhances the whole process but also improves privacy as “for the first time, citizens will have the opportunity to decide what pieces of their personal information they will share with whom and for what purpose.”
Besides, “people will have a dashboard where they will have the records of all their transactions, and they will be able to withdraw their consent after a certain point in time when they no longer need to have interactions with that provider or relying party giving them a service.”
“This is huge, it's immense,” claims Viky, full of excitement. “It will change the digital world for the better.”
Apart from enhancing privacy, it also improves security, as we will see in some disruptive applications that will take place, probably, in a short time. For instance, the next Olympic Games, which will happen in 2028, from Viky’s point of view, will have a digital identity wallet “to prove their right to access certain areas of the venues, or they will have to show their tickets and their identities, allowing the organizer to verify them.”
“Signature will never die, and people will always need to sign something,” continues Viky. It seems the wallet also regards the process of signing, and it will allow European citizens to sign contracts through the wallet. “This will be much more simplified because you won’t need to walk through complex processes to verify your identity, obtain a digital certificate for an electronic signature, and then be able to sign a document with legal value.”
This will be a total game changer, accelerating everything in a huge way, especially if we look back at where we came from: “We used tokens or smart cards connected to computers to digitally sign a document, installing drivers, updating drivers, installing applications. And now magically, everything will happen like that!”
Viky is looking forward to seeing this happen. And she reveals that this is one of the reasons why she would like “to go to the future a little bit.”
Looking forward to the future, Viky suggests creating more “user-friendly services within digital transactions,” as well as implementing “more collaboration between legal teams, legal people, and technology teams.”
Besides, in terms of Digital Identity, there are some divergences among countries since “there are different cultures.”
Viky explains: “Even if they are able to implement a technology solution, people are not always happy to change their habits, or there are others who are not capable from a technological or financial point of view, but they will be willing to jump on something new. But for sure, all of them will have an evolution somehow at a certain point in time.”
Finally, Viky remarks that interactions are human-based and trust is between people. Also, “it is something that you build over time and you can lose instantly.” Viky encourages all those who want to offer something to others and collaborate for a greater good, to join the GLTH.
“Trust technology, trust people, build that trust together, be part of the trust and work to keep that trust, to not lose it, because it's fundamental in every aspect: in legal, in technology, in everyday life, in your family. So trust is the key.”
eIDAS, Digital Identity, Digital Signatures & PKI expert
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