Anonyome Labs was among the world’s leading experts on the future of digital identities and cybersecurity at the 2025 European Identity and Cloud Conference in Germany in May.
Anonyome’s CTO Dr Paul Ashley presented on implementing hardware security modules in digital identity wallets, and Chief Architect Steve McCown discussed fighting AI deepfakes with personhood credentials.
The four-day EIC 2025 saw 300 experts share solutions to the complex challenges of human-centric digital identity in the face of accelerating artificial intelligence (AI) capabilities, and other developments in cutting-edge identity and cloud technologies.
Implementing hardware security modules in digital identity wallets
Dr Ashley explained how digital identity wallets can be enhanced through HSM integration to fulfill the requirements of the EU Digital Identity Wallet framework and analyzed each credential standard’s compatibility with various HSMs’ cryptographic capabilities. He focused on examining the secure enclave capabilities on iOS and Android phones and Yubikey 5C NFC devices to support different verifiable credential presentation proof signature profiles and strong holder binding. Dr Ashley explained:
- The secure enclaves on iOS and Android phones offer limited cryptographic flexibility for supporting various verifiable credential proof signature profiles, restricting the types of credentials and signing algorithms that can be utilized.
- Approximately 50% of current Android phones lack secure enclaves, limiting accessibility to this functionality for a significant portion of the population.
- Yubikey 5C NFC provides greater cryptographic flexibility and the added benefit of compatibility across the user’s wallet devices.
- None of the mentioned options are currently certified for EUDI Wallet use.
- Exploring the potential of remote HSMs like those from ubiqu as a solution to the identified limitations presents an intriguing avenue for future consideration.
Watch Dr Ashley’s presentation.
Steve McCown made two appearances at EIC 2025: he presented a “101” on personhood credentials (PHCs) and was part of an expert panel examining real-world implementations, emerging standards, and practical challenges in digital identity.
Benefits and challenges of personhood credentials
In his “101” Steve looked at the evolution of the “personhood” concept as a way of proving a user is a real human and not a bot in an AI world. He identified some of the significant benefits of PHCs, such as reducing impact of sockpuppeting, mitigating bot attacks, and verifying a person’s delegation to AI agent, but also warned of potential challenges, including:
- Equitable access: can PHCs affect access to digital services?
- Free expression: will people feel safe using PHCs?
- Checks on power: how will PHCs affect tech providers?
- Robustness of attack and error: how might PHCs be vulnerable to errors or subversive compromise?
Steve’s talk underscored the idea that the web faces a critical inflection point: as AI-generated content proliferates and platforms demand increasingly invasive identity verification, we risk creating a digital environment where every interaction requires credentials—essentially a “papers, please” culture for the internet. Privacy-preserving approaches to personhood verification can help prevent this dystopian outcome while still enabling necessary trust.
The expert panel explored how technologies such as zero-knowledge proofs and selective disclosure can preserve individual privacy while meeting legitimate verification requirements. The discussion addressed pressing questions around maintaining an open web, preventing privacy violations, and safeguarding human agency in increasingly digital environments.
Steve was joined on the panel by Ankur Banerjee, Co-chair of Technical Steering Committee, Decentralized Identity Foundation; Drummond Reed, DIF Community Member; and Sebastian Rodriguez, Strategy Advisor, Privado.ID.
Hosted by KuppingerCole, the annual European Identity and Cloud Conference is Europe’s premier event on digital ID, security, privacy, and governance in an AI-driven world. This year’s conference, which attracted 1500 attendees to 230 sessions over four days, focused on shaping the future of digital identities.
Anonyome Labs was proudly a silver sponsor of the conference, which is now in its 18th year.
Anonyome Labs and cheqd discuss learnings from the EIC
Following the 2025 EIC, Dr Ashley spoke to cheqd CEO Fraser Edwards about the key learnings from the conference, particularly:
- The latest developments in decentralized identity and verifiable credentials and progress towards the EU DI Wallet
- AI agent identity and the issues around delegating trust to AI agents and providing authorization control
Anonyome Labs’ suite of robust, market-ready software products have been deployed by leading brands across diverse industries worldwide. By offering developer-ready SDKs and APIs, Anonyome enables the seamless integration of decentralized identity capabilities for wallets, issuers, and verifiers. This supports the global shift towards decentralized and user-centric digital identity management, empowering organizations to adopt secure, scalable, and future-proof solutions.
Explore Anonyome Labs’ verifiable credentials solution
Read our whitepaper: Inside the Anonyome Platform.
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