Industry 4.0 is moving faster than the identity layer underneath it. Sensors, robots, autonomous vehicles and AI agents now make decisions across organisational borders in real time - yet most still authenticate with vendor PKI, OAuth bearer tokens, or device certificates that cannot rotate, cannot prove provenance, and cannot survive a quantum break. The result is a trust gap at the very edge where Industry 4.0 actually has to work.
This talk introduces the missing layer. KERI gives every device and agent a self-certifying, post-quantum-ready identifier. ACDCs carry verifiable credentials with full chain-of-authority provenance. The GLEIF vLEI anchors that chain in a globally interoperable root of legal-entity identity. Drawing on Veridian's production deployments and complaint GLEIF vLEI tooling, the session shows how this stack lands on real Industry 4.0 problems - device onboarding, OT command authority and cross-operator interoperability - verifiable in milliseconds, with no bilateral integrations.
