Description: Today we welcome to the podcast Jeremy Grant of the Better Identity Coalition. Jeremy’s roots in identity go back all the way to his college days at University of Michigan —one of the earliest adopters in the higher education space of the Smart Card. He has been involved since the early days of government internet regulation working with Bill Clinton, Virginia senator Chuck Robb, the Obama administration, the Department of Defense, NIST, and doing various legislative work as a staffer. In addition to being the Coordinator for the Better Identity Coalition, Jeremy now works for DC-based law firm Venable as well as a consultant to clients in several sectors. His focus is primarily in financial services, healthcare, IT, and recently in unemployment fraud due to billions of dollars lost during the pandemic. Jeremy dives into the specifics of why digital identity and cybersecurity are national issues that the private sectors simply cannot tackle on their own. Richard and Jeremy share their sentiments on creating a centralized and holistic approach to protecting and regulating identity in the United States.   Key Takeaways: [2:26] Jeremy’s background and how he came to be working in the identity space. [7:57] What is Jeremy’s day-to-day work like? [11:29] Where is DC’s attention in terms of identity? [13:45] Jeremy’s thoughts on the landscape of digital identity.[18:30] What is the tipping point for when action takes place in legislation? [22:15] How much can any private organization do to push the needle for digital identity and cybersecurity? [29:56] What does Jeremy see for state-based privacy initiatives?   Quotes: ●“People tell me all the time I have a dream job.” —Richard ●“I do have a great job. I really love it.” —Jeremy ●“How does stuff get done in DC? I mean you’ve got a mix of things in the executive branch and the legislative branch in and around identity where there’s just a ton of attention these days.” —Jeremy ●“We’ve now seen bipartisan legislation introduced through the Digital Identity Act that’s getting a lot more attention partially this past year with what we’ve been going through with the pandemic and digital becoming that much more important.” —Jeremy ●“A lot of regulators are just interested in getting perspective on how we look at identity.” —Jeremy ●“People are being recognized for these transformative changes and a lot of this stuff is being driven off of identity.” —Richard ●“How do we solve this nationally at a digital level in a way that might actually work? You can’t just solve it in UI, and you can’t just solve it in banking, and you can’t just solve it in-house. You need a more holistic approach where people can do this everywhere.” —Jeremy ●“It is a challenge at times to get people to sort of take things up a level and look at this more of a national priority as opposed to a sector priority.” —Jeremy ●“At the end of the day when it comes to the identity proofing side of things, the government is the only authoritative assurer of identity. And everybody in the industry who sells an identity verification product is trying to guess what only the government knows.” —Jeremy ●“You cannot solve this without government help.” —Jeremy ●“It almost seems like we have elevated the digital capabilities of everything in this world except for identity. It’s like we left identity behind.” —Richard ●“One of the things that I’ve found challenging in my digital identity evangelizing and proselytizing is this absence of a national data privacy standard here in the United States.” —Richard ●“If you keep protecting the stuff but not protecting the people, all I gotta do is be you and I get your stuff.” —Richard ●“Industry has come around to the idea that we need a national privacy law probably five years too late.” —Jeremy ●“Doing nothing is also a policy choice.” —Jeremy   Mentioned in This Episode: The Better Identity Coalition Indentiverse NIST Venable LLP