Even in today’s 2D version of the Internet, digital identity is a complex issue. Phishing is so sophisticated that an email from your bank, a call from your car insurer, or even a text from your mother may not be what it seems. The immersive nature of the metaverse, however, can set up more elaborate avenues of identity theft or impersonation.
“Social engineering threats can be even more effective in a 3D world, where deep illusions abound and impersonators are more adept at tricking victims,” said Jeff Schilling, global chief information security officer at digital business services firm Teleperformance. . He emphasized the importance of digital identity: “Regardless of the medium – whether it’s the phone or the metaverse – the best way to combat social engineering is by having a foolproof way to verify who’s on the other end of the conversation.
Identity protection will be a critical component of successful businesses in the metaverse – and it’s an especially important consideration for those getting on the ground.
Metaverse creators can lead on cyber security.
Although Metavas is currently an article about the silent experiences of individual companies, that will not be the case for much longer. Major technology players are building the aforementioned infra-structure. Organizations like the Open Metaverse Interoperability (OMI) Group, an open source community of tech industry veterans working to help companies achieve “meta-traversal” capabilities, have the ability to move seamlessly from Saks to Starbucks. Soon, these innovators will want to integrate those environments to create a seamless experience for their shared customers.
David Trugg, Forrester’s vice president and principal analyst, noted that MetaVas will be the next iteration of the Internet — and like the early Web, it will go through some growing pains. He notes that in the Web’s infancy, there was no cryptography or e-commerce. No one used web passwords or had an online bank account. “Very quickly, we needed systems and social terms and infrastructure that mirrored some of our expectations in the physical world,” he said. “These systems were necessary for people to engage in personal relationships, to buy things, to trust that they could enter a credit card number online, and so on.”
In the metaverse, the role of cybersecurity becomes “an order of magnitude or two” more important by creating similar connections, says Trugg. As such, first movers in space are in a unique position to anticipate security gaps and build platform defenses.
At the dawn of this measurement era, there is an opportunity for companies to learn from past technology evolutions and security snafus. For example, the advent of AI algorithms has demonstrated the importance of protecting against bias. Migration to the cloud has highlighted the importance of encryption. “When the business community first moved from a traditional data center environment to the public cloud, everyone went there with great excitement — but they forgot to bring security with them,” says Schilling. “I see a similar scenario building with the Metaverse.”
