ARIADNEXT, in collaboration with European partners, has just obtained a European research project, called SOTERIA, funded by the Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation programme under the topic Digital Security and Privacy for citizens. The project will start officially on the 1st of October 2021. Let’s find out the objectives of this ambitious project coordinated by ARIADNEXT!
An issue that concerns us all
With the Covid-19 world pandemic, it has become critical for citizens to perform most of their day-to-day life actions remotely: medical consultations, management of bank accounts, payments for health systems, insurances, taxes, orders, etc, and this is expected to become the new standard. However, all these actions require the citizen to be identified and personal data to be transferred.
These personal data have to be repeatedly completed to access to each service, which can be time-consuming for the citizens. In addition, the use of the personal data collected is most of the time not transparent for the citizen, as well as the organisations which have access to them.
For these reasons, more than 70% of the EU citizens have concerns about the online use of their personal data. Currently, there is no solution to allow them to take the control and manage their data as they see fit.
A secured platform for the management of personal data
To tackle this issue, SOTERIA proposes to combine a digital identity secured by a high-level identification with a decentralized data storage platform. This tool will be developed hand in hand with the European citizens, to raise their awareness on potential privacy risks, but also to be sure to design a platform that will meet their needs and expectations. The SOTERIA platform will be user-centric, accessible to everyone, without the need for specific ICT skills. It will protect the privacy of the European citizens and give them the full control of their data, ensuring that only the data that is needed to access to a service is shared with the service provider. It will also include an educational tool to raise the awareness of citizens on these issues.
13 partners to meet the challenge !
To take up this challenge, ARIADNEXT has gathered a consortium of 13 European partners (representing 8 countries) from different fields. Scientific experts in ID verification and digital identity (ARIADNEXT, FR), computer vision (CVC, ES), cryptography (KU Leuven, BE), privacy (Inria, FR) and biometry (Idiap, CH) will develop the technical tools needed to achieve our ambitious objectives. Three service-providers (IPCenter, AT – e-learning, BBHRI, ES – e-health and Scytl, ES – e-voting) will implement SOTERIA in their solutions, and test it with a group of European citizens at the pilot scale.
Experts in law (STELAR, DE) and ethics (Noria Onlus, IT) will ensure that the SOTERIA platform is compliant with the regulations.
Finally, social and human science experts (Audencia, FR) and a consumer association (Infocons, RO) will help us to develop a user-friendly tool, perfectly in line with citizens’ expectations.
Collaborate with IDnow!
Innovation and research have been at the heart of ARIADNEXT’s activities since the company was founded. Our team of experts is constantly seeking to push the current limits in the areas of identity verification and fraud detection, in order to offer even more effective solutions. Image analysis, character recognition, biometrics, deep learning, artificial intelligence… we are convinced that together we can go further!
We are open to any type of collaborative research. Do not hesitate to contact us!
This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 101018342.
