Entering the World of Decentralized Identity and Verifiable Credentials

Introducing Microsoft Entra Verified ID

Microsoft Entra Verified ID, formerly known as Azure AD Verifiable Credentials, is a managed service for decentralized identity, a new and disruptive identity model that unlocks a number of scenarios and experiences that were previously either complex or impossible to attain.

Entra Verified ID, part of the Microsoft Entra family of products that encompasses all of Microsoft’s identity and access capabilities, is in general availability (GA) since beginning of August'22.

It provides organizations with a scalable, standards-based way to issue and verify digital verifiable credentials (VCs) with end users or other organizations as part of an identity verification process. With Entra Verified ID, organizations can easily and more securely verify workplace credentials, education status, certifications, or other unique identity attributes in seconds. Plus, it respects the privacy of end users, who can own and control their own identity.

Each of us indeed needs a digital identity we own, one which securely and privately stores all elements of our digital identity.

Entra Verified ID makes portable, self-owned identity possible, and represents our commitment to an open, trustworthy, interoperable, and standards-based decentralized identity future for individuals and organizations. The technology is based on open-source technologies developed in partnership with a wide community of developers, partners, and identity leaders. It allows individuals, organizations, and devices to decide what they share, when they share it, with whom they share it, and - when necessary - take it back. 

Entra Verified ID makes it easy to issue and verify such credentials for anyone, anywhere.

Want to discover a new approach to identity technologies? To learn more about this new service? To discover how easy it is for any company to use it every day, and how to make it a great experience for the developer community to deliver innovative solutions for endless numbers of use cases?

What about a Guided Tour?

To answer the above questions and get started with Entra Verified ID today, I have the pleasure to share with you the availability of a new guide "A Guided Tour of Microsoft Entra Verified ID". This content is available on the Microsoft Download Center here: https://aka.ms/verifiedid_guided_tour.

As such, the provided guide is about illustrating how easy it is to leverage the key product capabilities to enable:

• Fast remote onboarding: validate identity information for trustworthy self-service enrollment and reduced time-to-hire.
• More secure access to apps and resources: verify identity credentials and status to grant least-privilege access for employees, customers, and business partners.
• Easy account recovery: replace support calls and security questions with a streamlined self-service process to verify identities.
• Custom business solutions: easily build solutions for a wide range of use cases with our developer kit, APIs, and documentation. During the preview period, customers from around the world have issued and verified credentials across a variety of scenarios, ranging from remote onboarding at work, and collaboration across business boundaries to enabling education beyond the campus.

It is structured as multipart document with specific focus and walkthrough for each of the parts:

• Part 1: a first walkthrough to illustrate how to get started with verifiable credentials in your Azure Active Directory (Azure AD) tenant.
• Part 2: a developer walkthrough to illustrate how to get started with custom credentials with Microsoft Entra Verified ID.
• Part 3: a developer walkthrough to illustrate how to support verifiable credentials with your Azure Active Directory (Azure AD) B2C custom policies.

And a companion repository on GitHub provides you with code sample applications (and other needed components) for use in conjunction. They all demonstrate how to use Microsoft Entra Verified ID to issue and consume managed verifiable credentials (a.k.a. directory-based credentials, custom credentials).

We hope that you will enjoy the guided tour of Microsoft Entra Verified ID.

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