Credentials as a Service Providing Self Sovereign Identity as a Cloud Service Using Trusted Execution Environments

Abstract

With increasing digitization, more and more people use their identification credentials for accessing online services; which increases concern for data privacy. To ensure user's privacy, alternate credential management schemes must be adopted. Self-Sovereign Identity (SSI) is a form of credential management where users are in charge of their credentials. Privacy-critical data is stored at the user's end and they can choose to do selective disclosure of minimal required information to access services. Currently, SSI solutions are not being widely adopted by service providers and the ecosystem is fragmented. One of the reasons for the lack of adoption is the need for maintaining private infrastructure for credential issuance, as critical user information is to be handled during credential issuance. To cater to this, we present a solution that enables the service providers to run their credential issuers on public cloud - a so-called Credentials as a Service (CaaS). CaaS issuers run inside Trusted Execution Environments (TEE) enabling credential issuers to ensure user's privacy while enjoying the flexibility of the pay-per-use cloud model. CaaS can pave the way for making SSI credentials ubiquitous in identity management solutions.