OLYMPUS Project: Shaping the future of the Digital Identity

Olympus is a European digital identity management framework that ensures virtual identity interactions, so that they are secure and respectful of citizens’ privacy.

The latest advances in the Olympus Project were presented on 17 September at the eID Forum held in Tallinn.

The OLYMPUS H2020 project tackles the challenges associated with the protection of privacy in the use of digital identity management solutions, establishing a European framework of interoperability in identity management, based on novel cryptographic approaches applied to currently deployed technologies. In particular, OLYMPUS employs distributed cryptographic techniques to split up the role of the Internet Identity Provider over multiple authorities, so that no single identity provider can impersonate or track its users. By not requiring users to store long-term credentials, the OLYMPUS framework will not be dependent on any protected hardware or software environment on users’ devices, and will thus be able to provide a much better user experience.

OLYMPUS addresses the current security problems of virtual identities by linking citizens’ physical identities with their digital identities, but in such a way that new digital identities can be derived to preserve citizens’ privacy when accessing different on-line and off-line services.

To show the advantages of the solution when it comes to protecting privacy, two use cases are managed within the project:

  • The first use case, in which Logalty has provided all its legal and technological know-how, is able to protect privacy when obtaining and submitting a standardised and anonymised credit report (provided by CTI and Informa D&B), in order to obtain a financial product without revealing the identity of the person, until the time of contracting.
  • Whereas the second use case, considered from the perspective of the privacy of information, deals with the use of the digital driver’s license on the mobile phone (Mobile Driver License).

Main objectives of OLYMPUS:

  • An identity framework that supports solid links between citizens’ physical and digital identities.
  • Solution based on distributed cryptography to split up the role of the IDP over multiple authorities.
  • Interoperability with existing identity management frameworks (IdM) such as SAML, Identity Mixer, or OpenID Connect.

The OLYMPUS consortium includes the University of Murcia, IBM, Alexandra Institute, Multicert, Scytales and Logalty. For further information see https://olympus-project.eu/

The research that has produced these results has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation Programme, pursuant to Grant Agreement No. 786725 (OLYMPUS).