In an age of AI-powered identity fraud and deepfakes, identity verification is becoming a critical part of combating identity fraud.
At Oktane 2025, Vivek Raman, Vice President and General Manager of Okta Personal, spoke with theCUBE host Rebecca Knight and analyst Jackie McGuire about the power of verifiable digital credentials to provide the level of assurance consumers and businesses need.
"The cool thing about this technology is that it's a cryptographically secure way to issue a credential to a person," Raman says, explaining that its cryptographic properties prevent anyone from copying or changing it. He adds that the credential is also attached to a human through the biometrics on their device.
"I have to use the Face ID or Touch ID on my device to unlock that credential," says Raman. "Because of that, it's got all these great properties that make it more secure than a physical document."
Historically, digital identity verification was only done in rare instances online, he notes.
"When I go to pay my taxes, for example, with the IRS, I have to go do a face scan and scan a physical document — [a] passport or a driver's license — and that's kind of a one-time thing," he explains. "If you're building an application that requires that, it's pretty costly, you have to involve third parties, and [it] introduces a lot of user friction. So where we see this new technology around verifiable credentials helping with this is making that repeatable, easy, and much more frictionless for users."
He explains that using verifiable digital credentials can also allow users to avoid sharing more information than is necessary by enabling selective disclosure. If he wants to go to a liquor store and buy a bottle of wine, for example, he must show his driver's license, which contains his full name, address, and photo, when all the store needs is his age.
"Selective disclosure with verifiable credentials lets you, the user, be in control of what data you share," he says. "So in an online transaction, they can say, 'all we need to know is: are you over 21? Yes or no?' And that's it. And they can trust the answer to that."
In the interview, Raman also discusses government efforts around digital credentials and the importance of open standards that enable interoperability between states, countries, and different systems. Click the video above to watch the full video and learn more about identity verification.
