Jeremy Grant, Venable's Managing Director of Technology Business Strategy, was quoted in a June 21, 2017, American Banker article on the liabilities associated with banks creating digital identity verification services. Such services would for example, allow banks to vet customers and send verified data to electrical utility companies; eliminating the need to request a driver’s license from the potential customer. With such services however, comes the risk of bad actors being introduced into the system.
"We've got high risk between all three parties," Grant said while speaking at the 2017 Cloud Identity Summit. "Without any certainty as to how the risk would be mitigated or allocated in a federation system, the market is stalled." In efforts to solve the impasse, Virginia Governor Terry McAuliffe signed a law in 2015 creating a legal framework for identity systems and limiting liability for identity providers if they follow high standards and best practices. In theory, this should reduce the risk to the system, but if the standards aren't strong enough it could just transfer risk from the providers to individuals and relying parties, further discouraging participation, Grant cautioned.