A World with Validated Identities

Digital identity is positioned as both a business enabler and a security control, becoming more critical as work becomes mobile and organizational boundaries overlap. Traditional onboarding is described as flawed because it relies on unvalidated directory records and treats directory enrollment as the start of trust, even though usernames and passwords are not meaningfully tied to real-world identity. As organizations increasingly rely on partners, suppliers, and contractors—often via federated arrangements—governance becomes difficult and visibility into “who has access to what” degrades, especially when partners further subcontract work. Manual onboarding between organizations (e.g., after mergers) is redundant, error-prone, and commonly devolves into assumed trust, while external service providers (e.g., physical security firms) can change staff rapidly without the customer having timely insight.

A core claim is that secure identity lifecycle management must begin with stronger onboarding: identity verification and identity data validation should establish a trusted user base. The text distinguishes validation (proving credentials/attributes exist, are current, and were issued by the right authority) from verification (linking those attributes to the correct individual). Because high-assurance KYC-style processes are costly for many non-regulated organizations, the proposed alternative is to leverage a network of verified identities—reusing assurance already established by national eID frameworks, financial institutions, certificate authorities, and related trust providers. The eIDAS levels of assurance (low, substantial, high) provide a standardized basis for determining whether an identity is sufficient for specific access requests and for enabling flexible MFA (smart cards, tokens, OTP/OTAC, mobile apps), SSO, and passwordless initiatives.

Liga’s GlobalID is presented as a platform that connects enterprise identity sources (HR systems, Active Directory, SAP) with authoritative validation methods (eID, passports, video identification) and authentication factors (CAs, tokens, apps), adding auditability, logging, and revocation to support governance and compliance.

• The workforce is increasingly mobile and accesses systems from any device and any location.
• Partner onboarding is sometimes federated to allow access to specific applications under contractual obligations.
• Contractors and consultants can be federated into an organization’s environment by partners.
• Manual data input between organizations’ systems during mergers is time-consuming, redundant, and prone to mistakes.
• Usernames and passwords remain a common method for granting access to employees and partners.
• In August 2021, CISA stated that single-factor authentication (username/password) is an exceptionally risky cybersecurity practice.
• ENISA recommends using multifactor authentication whenever possible.
• eIDAS levels of assurance are described in three levels: low, substantial, and high.
• Trusted identity network success is cited in Denmark, Estonia, Latvia, the Netherlands, and Sweden.
• Liga was founded in 1999 and is based in Denmark.

• “Workforce onboarding is flawed, with too much trust being placed on unvalidated records stored in the organization's own directory.”
• “The perimeters of the organization are not only disappearing, they are also overlapping.”
• “The relationships (and system access) between an organization and its workforce, and between organizations themselves, is missing trust as well as the evidence to bolster that trust.”
• “A crucial part of onboarding is misunderstood: when the relationship begins.”
• “Neither username nor password is connected to who the user is, but act as if simply because the digital identity is listed in the directory, it can be trusted.”
• “Secure identity lifecycle management begins with verification at the time of onboarding to build a validated user base.”
• “Identity data is validated, or proven, to represent real data.”
• “By confirming that the identity attributes describe the right person, their identity is verified.”
• “Deconstruct the onboarding journey by inheriting identities from a trusted network.”
• “It is time to think of digital identity not as an administrative task, but as means of propelling your digital transformation to more secure access and better workforce experiences.”