Collaboration between Gaia-X Federation Services (GXFS) and IDunion
Gaia-X creates an open, federated digital ecosystem for data infrastructure for decentralized cloud and edge workloads and data sharing capabilities. As part of the core services, the so-called Gaia-X Federation Services (GXFS) are targeting the areas of Identity & Trust, Federated Catalogue, Sovereign Data Exchange and Compliance as open-source reference implementations.
The project is funded by the governments of France and Germany to support the data-driven business models for the European economy. Part of every digital service solution is decentralized identity and access management, which enables participants of Gaia-X Federations to manage their participants in a self-sovereign manner.
The identity layer determines how GDPR-compliant interactions between stakeholders can be offered, established and trusted based on SSI (Self-Sovereign Identity) principles without the need for a centralized controller. Such a decentralized implementation has been developed by IDunion. Despite the agnostic approach of Gaia-X, both projects collaborate to form a holistic solution and are aligned in regards to their principles of data sovereignty, openness and user control.
Easy authentication via Lissi
In this context authentication is the process of verifying the already known identity of a principal (user). Traditionally a centralized Identity provider is used to identify and authenticate a user and you trust them by default. While there are single sign-on solutions by worldwide acting technology companies, these authentication mechanisms make users dependent on the provider while also introducing comprehensive surveillance risks.
Therefore, Gaia-X goes another way with personal wallets such as the Lissi Wallet to enable users to manage their identity by themselves as well as offering a passwordless authentication method, which doesn’t depend on a single centralized service. While this implementation is done via Lissi Connect to bridge newly evolving SSI technologies with existing standards like OpenID Connect, other vendors or open-source integrations can also be used simultaneously.
Demonstration at the Hannover Fair
The first draft of the integration was demonstrated at the Hannover Fair, an international industry trade exhibition. The final integration with any wallets is currently in progress and will be presented to the public at a later stage.
Benefits for users:
- Convenience: Self-managed and controlled identity and login without password
- Transparency: of interactions with GDPR conformity
- Order: Using a credential for authentication and authorization
- User-centric: use the same application for interacting with multiple stakeholders
Benefits for users:
- no vendor lock-in: Usage of open standards
- Streamlined UX: for authentication and authorization
- Independence: Decentralized user and access management
- Risk reduction: Interacting with verified participants
- Domain independent: Shared trusted infrastructure with European values and regulatory conformance.
About Gaia-X Federation Services:
The Gaia-X Federation Services (GXFS) represent the minimum technical requirements needed to build and operate a cloud-based, self-determined data infrastructure ecosystem. On the basis of technical specifications, services are developed based on an open source code. These will be further developed into operational services by the Gaia-X community and continuously improved.
Led by eco, the GXFS-DE project is also funded by the German Federal Ministry of Economic Affairs and Climate Action and is in close exchange with the Gaia-X Association for Data and Cloud (AISBL) and the French funded project GXFS-FR.
You can find more information on our Website.
About eco – Association of the Internet Industry:
With over 1,000 member companies, eco is the largest Internet industry association in Europe. Since 1995 eco has been highly instrumental in shaping the Internet, fostering new technologies, forming framework conditions, and representing the interests of members in politics and international committees. eco’s key topics are the reliability and strengthening of digital infrastructure, IT security and trust, as well as ethically-oriented digitalisation. eco advocates for a free, technologically-neutral, and high-performance Internet.
You can find more information on our Website.
About Lissi:
Lissi provides convenient applications for companies and organizations to receive, organize and share trusted data from end users while respecting privacy and data sovereignty. This includes the Lissi Wallet as well as our applications for organisations. You can find more information on our Website.
About IDunion:
IDunion aims to create an open ecosystem for decentralized identity management, which can be used worldwide and is based on European values and regulations. The project is funded by the German Ministry of Economics and Climate Actions. You can find more information on our website.