The covid pandemic has disrupted how people connect in business and in all walks of life so the Digital Identity New Zealand organisation is staging an international virtual summit later this month looking at identity and privacy problems the world is facing.

A key speaker at the virtual event on November 24 discussing Aotearoa’s digital identity ecosystem is Bianca Lopes, who has been named among the top 100 influencers in identity worldwide along with US whistleblower Edward Snowden.

Lopes, from Brazil, is a technologist and an entrepreneur, strategy consultant and a regular speaker at global industry events.

Throughout her career, she has specialised in the intersection where people meet technology and is a mentor to other women in the cybersecurity industry.

She has been a banker and worked in partnership with more than 40 large financial institutions, telcos and governments to reshape their human approach to technology by using the power of rethinking identity.

Including some of the most influential organisations in the world; including Visa, HSBC and most recently, the Brazilian Central Bank.

Lopes supports banking and innovation departments using creative media and storytelling strategies to share knowledge and support a culture of learning across their internal team and B2B ecosystem. As a global businessperson, she has worked on projects in Europe, MENA, North America, Brazil, China and India.

She is on the board of Facephi, which is a global leader in facial recognition technology and in mobile biometric technologies and has co-authored a few Citibank papers which focuses on the importance of having an identity system for banks and the role of identity in combating financial inclusion for emerging countries.

“When it comes to the problems around biographical data, they become more evident in the digital world.

“We need to spark serious intent and passion to facilitate financial and technical literacy. Identity and privacy are problems that today’s world must face. We must not postpone, like most regulators have done with cosmetic legislation.

“Biographical attributes keep being the main method of identification in Brazil. New data emerged during digitalisation but we are still not thinking it through and using the same old identification’s logic. We have to change.”

Lopes says these (covid) are uncertain times, but failing to invest in learning and interoperable digital solutions would be a costly long-term oversight.

“We have pushed ecosystems and people beyond their limits. Boundaries have disappeared, democracies regressed, science questioned. Massive walls of inequality are created daily.”

The summit will discuss New Zealand’s digital identity trust framework, the introduction of a digital identity bill, MBIE’s work on a consumer data right will create and a strengthened Privacy Act.

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