The COVID-19 pandemic has proved to be one of the deadliest disease outbreaks in recent history. Almost every business around the world is affected by the severity of this pandemic. The impacts of the pandemic are expected to be felt for years to come. The drive for digitization has accelerated significantly due to the need for social distancing. However, all the things that are being done without face to face contact possess several risks. As the world is experiencing a revolutionary digital transformation, cybercrime and frauds have also increased. Crooks are getting more inventive in the ways to scam and extort money from unsuspecting people. Thus cybersecurity has become critical in this tech-savvy world.
Established in 2013, Sedicii has been addressing this issue since its inception. It is an award-winning company that is creating a federated global identity verification network that enables real-time identity verification by certified, trusted identity providers. Sedicii’s solutions enable the companies to protect their customer’s digital identity by ensuring that it is never shared without their express consent.
Delivering World-Class Solutions
Sedicii’s advanced cryptography provides a single platform that enables organizations to benefit from world-class solutions to deliver. The company uses technologies such as identity management, Zero-Knowledge Proofs (ZKP), Multi-Party Computation (MPC), and Artificial Intelligence (AI) in an advanced high assurance approach that keeps people safe and secure and gives them the benefits that digital services can provide. Out of these technologies, ZKP is at the heart of Sedicii’s service offerings. It is a cryptographic protocol which allows verification of a piece of information between two parties without sharing any of the underlying information. Some other solutions provided by the company are as follows.
- KRIPTAN Network – This is a solution that enables a citizen to verify one or several aspects of their identity against one or several identity providers.
- KYCExpert – It is a solution which enables organizations to onboard corporate and individual clients in a simple, easy to use a cloud-based solution.
- PREXA – It allows financial institutions to securely share the knowledge they have about the clients or transactions without disclosing the underlying data or information.
A Serial Entrepreneur with Acute Business Acumen
Rob Leslie, the CEO, and Founder of Sedicii, has been instrumental in the company’s prowess. With almost 35 years of huge experience under his belt, he’s leading the company towards the betterment. After graduating as an Electronics Engineer from Dublin City University, he spent his initial career in Japan. There, being a part of the initial management team in Dell Japan he was bitten by the innovation bug and this was the motivation behind the inception of Sedicii. Rob believes that being innovative is about addressing the problems that people, businesses, and countries don’t know until something goes wrong.
Sedicii was Rob’s seventh startup and as an entrepreneur, his roles and responsibilities are varied by the nature of the type of business, a number of employees, and investment. He has been instrumental in the company’s success over the years. Sedicii was named as the World Economic Forum (WEF) Technology Pioneer for its work on ZKP. Moreover, it has won over 20 awards from well-known organizations like BT, Citi, EIT Digital, and BBVA. At Sedicii, Rob makes sure that the appropriate solutions are provided with respect to the core values and mission of the company.
Exploiting the Societal Benefits of Digitization
The core values and mission of Sedicii are centered around a new global standard for digital identity and KYC that will reduce costs, improve interoperability, reduce crime, and ensure privacy. These benefits from the rapid advances of digital economies favor every citizen, consumer, employee, and visitor as well as Sedicii’s companies operating abroad. However, these benefits are threatened by a lack of adequate digital trust mechanisms. This lack of trust mechanisms provides unethical companies and organized crime with huge opportunities for anonymity. Sedicii wants to change this scenario and optimize the benefits of digitization by delivering reliable and trustworthy solutions.
Excelling the Challenges
Along with reliability, providing a service where it can prove something without sharing anything was a challenge for Sedicii in the early years. In some respects, it is still a challenge when coupled with the citizens’ outlook on data privacy. These challenges lessened with the introduction of the European GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation) in May 2018. However, the future challenges hold a certain amount of skepticism that creating a truly reusable global digital identity is possible. The company combats these challenges by thinking outside the box and believing what seems impossible can be made possible with some skill and a lot of hard work.
Inclusive Team Culture insisting Participation
Sedicii has a multi-locational team with 15 employees over four countries. The team culture within the company is inclusive. The CEO communicates daily with individual teams and weekly with the entire team. The management team also meets the CEO exclusively once a week. The company emphasizes on the full participation of the employees and encourages the same. Sedicii believes that encouraging contributions make the team stronger and individuals also feel more valued. Thus this culture gives a sense of security to the employees and their full productivity is optimized to provide the best solutions.
Advancements in Near Future
Sedicii is currently working with several government agencies and financial institutions in Europe on POCs and Pilots and Service Agreements. Furthermore, the company has developed a new technology in the context of Anti-Money Laundering (AML) transaction monitoring processes. In this technology, banks can collaborate and jointly compute advanced risk assessment algorithms that consume information available in the different banks about their customers without actually having to share that information using Sedicii’s secure multi-party computation (MPC) cryptographic protocol. This can significantly impact the ability to identify fraud and other illicit activities and help organizations with more security.
A Piece of Advice for Aspiring Entrepreneurs
As a prolific and experienced entrepreneur, Rob advises the aspiring entrepreneurs to do extensive research before the start of their journey, be prepared to listen and take advice. He further says, “Be prepared for good times and challenging times before you succeed—never give up on your vision and belief on yourself. Persist, Persevere.”
