Some thoughts after visiting Identiverse 2025.

The Future is Already Here — It’s Just Not Very Evenly Distributed

—William Gibson, novelist, in 1993.

Last week, Richard Mallam (VO’s founder and CEO) and myself had the privilege of presenting at Identiverse, an annual event where the Digital Identity industry comes together to discuss the breadth of topics encapsulated in this essential branch of cybersecurity. (You can download our slides here).

Apart from the large number of questions at our session and meeting some familiar faces, I was heartened to meet and talk to practitioners from across the spectrum at our booth in Startup Alley. Identiverse has always been a conference focused on the practical outcomes of identity security, more so than the nitty-gritty of standards, or being just a forum for vendors to pitch.

Over an $A11 flat white that reminded me how far I was from home, I reflected on the differences in those discussions. Some organisations sought to defeat impersonation attacks during employee onboarding, others wanted to streamline authorisation for mobile workforces without compromising governance, while consumer-focused organisations aimed to protect users from phishing and identity theft.

In short—we discussed a broad range of use cases over the three days, with organisations working at different levels of maturity and capability, but all experiencing the same problems.

As a vendor who lives and breathes the latest technology daily, I was struck by the issues these people faced in their day-to-day jobs. While VO has a modern passwordless VC solution, many of the companies I talked to are managing authentication with username/password and SMS OTP. They were keen to learn about Passkeys and VCs, while confirming that their focus was on saving money, doing more with less, and improving end user outcomes.

Being innovative, or a leader in identity security, was less on their minds.

By contrast, VO's customers are already using VCs for all the above use cases, helping them to retire tech debt and reduce risk.

Gibson's observation about uneven distribution rings especially true in digital identity. While some organisations are already living in that future, others are still fighting today’s identity security battles.

One day I hope that my online experience will be all passkeys and VCs, and that identity theft is a thing of the past, or at least a much less worrying possibility than it is now. And that organisations can focus on service delivery rather than defeating criminal threats.

Which would be a future worth looking forward to, don’t you think?