Hi #smartcommunity friends. In this episode of the Smart Community Podcast, I have a great chat with Dawid Jacobs, a prominent Identity Management Specialist in South Africa. Dawid tells us about his interesting background in the police force being trained in forensics as a fingerprint expert and his passion for identity management. He tells us about his company Dal Global and its focus, what a Smart Community is to him and we discuss the importance of trust and identity in Smart Communities. Dawid then dives a bit deeper into Dal Global and shares more about what they do, as well as the applications their technology offers, before we chat about synthetic identities and the implication of deep fakes. We finish our conversation discussing the emerging trends of a more human element in Smart Communities, the micro and macro working together for communities, and the need for more regulation in the FinTech space. As always, we hope you enjoyed listening to this episode as much as we enjoyed making it! 

Listen here:

What we cover in this episode: 

• Dawid’s background in the police force and being trained in forensics as a fingerprint expert 
• His passion for identity management 
• Dawid’s company Dal Global and its focus on identity management 
• What a Smart Community is to Dawid and the importance of trust in our Smart Communities
• The importance of identity and the human element in our Smart Communities 
• More about Dal Global, what they do, as well the applications their technology offers 
• About synthetic identities and the implications of ‘deep fakes’ and how at risk banks are 
• The emerging trends of a more human element in Smart Communities, the micro and macro working together for communities, and the need for more regulation in the FinTech space 

Quotes: 

“I went to the police force, I was trained in forensics, as a fingerprint expert. And in that space I got to learn a lot of different things, learn a lot about identity, learn how hard it is to prove that somebody is who they are, or isn’t who they claim to be.”

“I think that if we’re looking at all the concepts and ideas of a Smart Community, for me, it’s about trust, you need to have trust between the individual and an institution or even the government.”

“I think one of the most important things for me, in the Smart Community, is that the micro becomes part of the macro. The micro doesn’t just decide on what happens to the macro. The macro works from the bottom up so the individual has a say in everything that’s happening in the environment.”

“In my opinion, if you haven’t got a human in the Smart City, the Smart City/Smart Community does not exist. It’s just a pipe dream. So firstly, you’ve got to put the human being into the Smart City. So that’s core to any Smart Community/Smart City, because it’s from there that you determine what else happens.”

“[Dal Global] created a whole solution in the evolution of identity management, where are we sitting now? We can verify the person’s fingers, face, iris, voice, and then obviously on the blockchain as well. So it’s grown evolution has just forced us into the best route possible.”

“Onboarding is the most critical factor in the identity space. There is a lot of [people] using selfie solutions currently to onboard, and it’s very dangerous because there’s no forensic value in a face and it allows for synthetic identities to be created.”

“Deep fakes are getting better and better, for every one person trying to combat and fight against that, is 100 to 200 [people], creating better systems to create deep fakes. How we mitigate that is [through] onboarding, that’s the most important factor. You can only be a human being if you’ve got your fingerprints, eyes and irises onboarded at the same place, same time.”

Links:

Dal Global

Connect:

Find the full show notes at: www.mysmart.community 

Connect with David via LinkedIn or via email dawid.jacobs@dal-global.com  

Connect with me via email: hello@mysmart.community  

Connect with My Smart Community via LinkedIn or Twitter and watch on YouTube

The Smart Community Podcast is produced by Perk Digital.