Neil Merrett reports:
Experian has opted against making any immediate changes to the service it offers as a contracted identity provider for GOV.UK Verify following an unrelated data breach last month of one of its servers that contained some identifying information of T-Mobile customers in the US.
Experian is among five companies currently accredited to support the Government Digital Service (GDS) ID assurance tool, with an additional four organisations working to meet required security specifications by the time Verify is anticipated to launch as a live service next April.
GOV.UK Verify is being developed as a platform to allow users to select one of several pre-chosen companies to perform a check on their identity to securely access its online services – rather than relying on a single government database.
The first ID provider accredited to support GOV.UK Verify, Experian said that after “careful consideration”, it decided against making changes to how it supports the platform after discovering that an unauthorised party accessed T-Mobile data housed in a company server on September 16.
“However, we continue to invest to ensure that our internet facing services, including GOV.UK and underlying systems, are secure and provide as much protection as possible,” said the company in a statement.
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