30th April might not seem a particularly significant day but, for Ubisecure, 30th April 2002 marked the start of our journey. It was the day that the brainchild of Charles Sederholm and Petteri Stenius took shape. Our name is derived from a concatenation of “Ubiquitous Security”, and that ubiquitous approach and early vision has stood us in good stead.

Today, 20 years later, we have grown far beyond those early beginnings to become a leading European digital identity expert and the world #1 organisation identity provider. We’ve been involved in a number of ground-breaking projects over that time, and certainly there are many more to come.

Key projects from Ubisecure’s journey so far

In 2008, we delivered the core Identity and Access Management (IAM) system that powered the Finnish Katso platform, providing national level authorisation through delegation between individuals and organisations. Tied to strong individual and organisation identities, the Katso platform revolutionised B2B and B2G interactions, and enabled phenomenal savings for those involved. You can read our case study here to learn the breadth of capability and depth of saving.

In 2014, we took the next generation of that platform to DNA Telecom and revolutionised its B2B identity management, providing delegated administration for their business customers. The deployment was recognised internationally and awarded ‘Best B2B Identity Project’ at the 2015 European Identity and Cloud Awards. Read the case study here.

2018 contained a number of significant events for Ubisecure, having been taken private the previous year. Doubling down on our commitment to organisation identity, we became accredited by the Global Legal Entity Identifier Foundation (GLEIF) as a ‘Local Operating Unit’ – more commonly known as an LEI issuer. Our experience with Katso had confirmed the value of combining strong individual identity with strong organisation identity and the LEI provides the required global steppingstone to ubiquitous strong organisation identity.

2018 was also the year we secured Series A funding from Octopus Investments to expand our capabilities across the Nordics and beyond. Octopus have been a great partner in our growth journey, bringing a strong corporate development drive and effective corporate governance models.

2019 saw growing success with Telia Company winning the Best Consumer Identity Project award for their use of our platform at the core of their Identity Broker Service. Read the case study here.

2020 saw Ubisecure taking the global #1 position as issuer of new LEIs, passing Bloomberg and then GMEI in early 2020. We have maintained this #1 consistently since, and in March 2022 issued 1 in 4 new validated LEIs globally. Today we are helping global organisations manage their customer bases, enhance their KYC processes, and access the $4B annual saving potential identified by McKinsey. 2020 was also the year we launched IDaaS (Identity-as-a-Service) – our IAM as a managed service solution for organisations needing to deploy IAM capabilities quickly via a cloud or hybrid approach.

2021 saw us announce support for vLEI, a verifiable credential based on the LEI. We expect the vLEI to be at the centre of next generation organisation identity attribute solutions.

2022 is shaping up to be an interesting year. We are adding significant new capabilities to our IAM solution to improve how IAM supports risk-based authentication and online fraud prevention. We will also be presenting next month at the Gartner IAM Summit in London, where I will be on stage with Telia Company to talk about “How Reusable Digital Identity Will Drive Your Business & Delight Customers”. If you are attending the event, come and join us.

Ubisecure 20 Year Timeline

Where do we go from here?

Looking forward we see a continued growth plan, commercially and technically. The Katso platform proved the value of combining organisation and individual identity; now with LEIs we have the ability to deliver those proven savings globally. We see growing usage of Verifiable Credentials (VC) and we are working hard to ensure all the knowledge and business benefits we have realised in the classical identity domain can be transitioned to the upcoming VC based identity world.

Of course, none of this would be possible without the fantastic Ubisecure team. All aspects of our business are blessed with dedicated, hardworking individuals who together have shaped where we are today, and where we will be tomorrow.

We are in the midst of an exciting journey. It’s hard to predict what the next 20 years will hold instore for us, but we are looking to grow our teams. If you want to be part of our future – please check out our open job roles or get in contact with us.