Unisity Blockchain imperative for educational certificates

Transcription

1 Unisity Blockchain imperative for educational certificates

2 Blockchain Imperative for Educational Certificates 1 Introduction Academic credentials are revered assets for an individual. Whether one is applying for a job, higher education, passport or a visa, academic credentials form an evidence for one s identity and eligibility. For the credential verifying bodies, the challenges of dealing with fake credentials are despising. In fact, these have become more acute. The larger challenge lies in being able to prove the authenticity of a certificate. A cofounder of a renowned recruitment company says One out of every five resume floating around could be fake or dysfunctional. Fake certificate is an issue that we do struggle with on a daily basis. 1 Enterprises need better systems to help contain the rampant issue. Another challenge for the individual is to have to go through the arduous process of procuring copies of certificates from the issuing authorities and further proving their authenticity by notarizing them. Imagine being able to own and share credentials which are authentic, unchanged, and valid without any intervention by the issuing authority. But how can the credential issuing authorities possibly put a system in place and watch their investments on new systems at the same time? The answer is by thinking strategically to leverage modern technologies. This white paper discusses how Aeries solves this problem with Unisity, a solution based on Blockcerts - the open initiative for Blockchain Certificates, at an affordable cost. 1.

3 Blockchain Imperative for Educational Certificates 2 Challenge For organizations, document verification is an important part of accepting and processing any application. The process in itself is not a nice-to-have frill, but a must-have business process that every organization observes carefully. One veteran in the educational certificates verification industry says Transnational programs produce a lot of the qualifications that we see now, and determining their status can be very challenging. 2 As such; document verification is an essential process for every organization. United States Department of Education, Federal Trade Commission officials caution that some people buy phony credentials from diploma mills A survey by one of the largest online job finder sites, CareerBuilder, shows that a staggering 58% of employers have caught a lie on a resume. The site has more than 23 million unique visitors and over 1.6 million jobs. 4 companies that sell degrees or certificates on the Internet without requiring the buyer to do anything more than pay a fee. 3 This is especially true with large number of diploma mills cropping up. The task of verifying documents is cumbersome and involves cost. The process could take couple of weeks or sometimes up to month depending on the response from the issuing authorities. Background verifying agencies charge a handsome fee to verify documents from concerned authorities. There is a probability of some individuals incurring loss or damage of certificates. Such cases lead to random requests to the issuing authorities for reissue of the certificates THE LIMITATIONS OF TRADITIONAL SYSTEM The existing verification methods do not guarantee authentic, secured, tamper-proof and sealed records. Ownership - Even though the certificates have been awarded and belong to an individual, there is a strong dependency on the issuing authority in case the individual needs to reissue or authenticate the certificate. The ownership of the document does not lie with the individual. Ready availability - There is a good chance of loss or damage to the physical documents. In such cases, individual cannot readily avail duplicates of the certificates. In extreme cases, if the issuing authority ceases to exist, records can no longer be made available. Dependency on 3rd party - A lot of organizations depend on 3rd party verification agencies to verify the authenticity of the documents with the issuing authorities.

4 Blockchain Imperative for Educational Certificates 3 "The blockchain is the future of certification, and we believe that in the following years, more schools will use the public blockchain to secure their certificates and diplomas. It is much more efficient, secure, and simple than what you can find today in the industry. We think first about our students - we want to make sure that our certificates will always remain valid and verifiable by employers. It will also keep them safe and impossible to copy or hack." - Sylvain Kalache, Holberton School Co-Founder Time consuming - Typical exchange of hands in the verification process is time consuming depending on the location and the response time of the issuing authority. In the process, a great amount of time is lost. Costly - Verification and notarizing agencies charge fee for each document and hence verification is a costly affair. Understanding the product's design Unisity is a solution based on Blockcerts initiative for issuing, viewing, and verifying blockchain-based certificates. These digital certificates are registered on a blockchain, cryptographically signed, tamper-proof, and shareable. The solution aims at providing

5 Blockchain Imperative for Educational Certificates 4 the issuing authorities easy way of issuing such certificates, the individuals capacity to possess and share their own official certificates and, the consumers mechanism to verify the certificates. The key components of the solution are Issuing The issuing authority creates a digital certificate, cryptographically signs and registers a transaction for the certificate on the blockchain. The blockchain is an immutable and distributed store of transactions, with each block building upon the last. When a certificate is issued, its data is compressed into a 1-way hash and logged on the blockchain which generates a receipt. This makes it useful only for verification; i.e. a certificate can be hashed and compare to what is on the blockchain. And given what is on the blockchain is a 1-way hash, the original data cannot be reproduced. The solution has a provision to define batches as a logical grouping of recipients that are not expected to change, e.g. Batch of The issuer may revoke certificates in case of mistakes and issue another batch. Receiving and Sharing Recipients receive certificates into their certificate wallet. The wallet contains the issued certificate and the evidence required to verify, so that the recipient has the complete record that they can share. The issuer uses their digital signature to provide a credential to a recipient, identified by a recipient-owned public key, and issued on the blockchain. Viewing The certificates can be viewed by means of a viewer provided by the solution. Verifying The verification process checks for the certificate s integrity and validity. The solution provides link to the blockchain certificate and additional inputs needed for verification. The verification process ensures that the certificate was not tampered with by comparing hashes with what is registered on the blockchain. It ensures the certificate was not revoked, expired and is authentic.

6 Blockchain Imperative for Educational Certificates 5 How the product meets the challenge Extending the Unisity solution into your enterprise systems will deliver many high-level benefits. Among these for Issuing Authorities in particular: The process to check someone's degree is quite laborious, as you need to get the school's contact information, reach the right person and do it again for every candidate. Medium and big companies often delegate this task to third parties as it's very time and money consuming." - Blake Haggerty, CoreOS Recruiter For Issuing Authorities Issue cryptographically-sealed records that cannot be faked All records stored securely and referenceable No need to spend unplanned time to transmit official records to consumers Instant verification. No dependency on issuing authority to verify records Own and share official records easily as regular process No risk of losing records since the transaction is recorded on the blockchain Third parties can check records anytime No need to separately delete (call for deletion) of expired or errored certificates For Recipients and Consumers Own and share cryptographically sealed records All your records in one place (in your wallet) No waiting time to request authenticated official records Instant verification. No dependency on issuing authority to verify records Virtual verification process for employers and background verification agencies No risk of losing records since the transaction is recorded on the blockchain Access of certificates and mark sheets anytime Easily integrated blockchain lookup services to verify latest record

7 Blockchain Imperative for Educational Certificates 6 Conclusion Today, most evidence of achievement is stored in a proprietary information system or unofficially on paper. Aeries provides an easy way to issue educational certificates in a digital format that is stored on the blockchain that recipients can own and conveniently share with the consuming parties. Rather than having to rely on issuing authorities to transmit official credentials, the blockchain provides a new technical infrastructure allowing credentials to be shared on a peer-to-peer network and verified as authentic. Since these credentials are cryptographically sealed, recipients and third parties can be absolutely sure they are authentic and have not been altered since originally being issued. This creates benefits for everyone involved: Fraud protection for your organization Ownership for recipients Convenience for verifiers