GLEIF Establishes vLEI Technical Advisory Board to Support Growing Ecosystem for Automated Authentication and Verification of Legal Entities
July 2024 by Marc Jacob
The Global Legal Entity Identifier Foundation (GLEIF) announces the establishment of the vLEI Technical Advisory Board, a cross-industry body assembled to provide technical, governance, and developmental support to the growing vLEI stakeholder ecosystem.
The vLEI Technical Advisory Board consists of technology experts at globally respected organizations including Accelerate GmbH, esatus AG, healthKERI, Provenant Inc. and Prosapien LLC. It is chaired by Christoph Schneider, GLEIF’s Head of IT. The Board will work with GLEIF to facilitate ecosystem growth by supporting the system’s scalability and technical interoperability, promoting related use cases and participating in pilot projects, building partnerships, and strengthening ties with the Open-Source community to enable seamless adoption of vLEIs on a global scale.
vLEI digital organizational identity was developed in response to the urgent unmet need for tamper-resistant credentials to provide greater security, convenience, versatility, and ease of use for organizations and the persons representing them in official or functional roles.
As the vLEI ecosystem approaches readiness for mass utilization by the world’s legal entities, the vLEI Technical Advisory Board will engage with key technical stakeholders representing governments, businesses, and non-profit organizations to better understand their needs and promote the acceptance and adoption of vLEI services. It will also engage closely with technical public and private sector stakeholders, developers, and consultants to facilitate communication, encourage innovation and the development of novel applications, and exchange research and best practices.
Alexandre Kech, GLEIF CEO, comments: "The vLEI enhances the LEI ecosystem by providing an open, reliable, and highly scalable digital cross-border entity identification solution that has been developed to integrate with new and existing applications and frameworks. In this capacity, it is unique and, therefore, presents a rare opportunity to solve the critical problem of digital organizational identity globally, once and for all.
We have assembled the vLEI Technical Advisory Board to provide this new ecosystem with the best possible chance of succeeding. By connecting the experts and creating the strategic partnerships that will evolve the vLEI’s supporting infrastructure, we aim to establish this system as the fundamental enabler of digital trust across the many value chains that underpin our global economy."
The vLEI Technical Advisory Board will meet monthly. To learn more about GLEIF’s vLEI Technical Advisory Board, visit the dedicated page on the GLEIF website here.
Vasily Suvorov, CTO and Managing Partner, Accelerate GmbH, vLEI Technical Advisory Board, comments: "Strong, global and scalable governance framework of GLEIF combined with the vLEI technology finally offers once in a lifetime opportunity to establish a digital trust layer for a variety of enterprise use-cases across multiple industries. This will enable a new era of IT innovation targeting solutions that can automate any intercompany business process that requires regulatory, risk, and policy compliance certainty. We look forward to supporting this effort by contributing our decades-long expertise in enterprise IT innovation to a variety of business sectors."
Dr. Andre Kudra, CIO, esatus AG, vLEI Technical Advisory Board, comments: "We are proud to be part of the vLEI Technical Advisory Board, standing alongside other pioneers of digitalization and digital identities. Our involvement underscores our commitment to leading the charge in developing cutting-edge, secure digital identity solutions for a modern economy."
Philip Feairheller, CTO and Co-founder, healthKERI, vLEI Technical Advisory Board, comments: "healthKERI recognizes the crucial role of the vLEI in the global digital ecosystem. The verifiable Legal Entity Identifier (vLEI) represents the culmination of over a decade of work and collaboration across countries—coordinated through GLEIF’s efforts—to establish a secure, trusted digital organizational identity. Our participation with the vLEI Technical Advisory Board reflects our commitment to supporting the further success of the vLEI on the global stage."
Daniel Hardman, CTO and CISO, Provenant Inc., vLEI Technical Advisory Board, comments: "We’ve had X509 and other forms of organizational identity before – but we’ve never had rock-solid, transparent governance with recognized validity across a broad range of national legal jurisdictions. We’ve also never had the efficiency, flexibility, and cryptographic robustness of the vLEI. Provenant is building vLEI-based solutions for trust problems in banking, telco, and other verticals. We are excited to see trust go up in ways that satisfy regulators, decrease operational costs, eliminate risk, and make us all safer."
Sam Smith, Founder, Prosapien LLC, vLEI Technical Advisory Board, comments: "The vLEI is the first truly universal automated verifiable trust anchor for assuring organizational identity. The TAB provides a beneficial interface between the underlying technology, the ecosystem governance framework, and industry applications."