Enhancing National Digital Identity Systems: A Framework for Institutional and Technical Harm Prevention Inspired by Microsoft’s Harms Modeling

Giovanni Corti, Giovanni Corti, Gianluca Sassetti, Gianluca Sassetti, Amir Sharif, Roberto Carbone, Silvio Ranise, Silvio Ranise

2025

Abstract

The rapid adoption of National Digital Identity systems (NDIDs) across the globe underscores their role in ensuring the human right to identity. Despite the transformation potential given by digitization, these systems introduce significant challenges, particularly concerning their safety and potential misuse. When not adequately safeguarded, these technologies can expose individuals and populations to privacy risks as well as violations of their rights. These risks often originate from design and institutional flaws embedded in identity management infrastructures. Existing studies on NDIDs related harms often focus narrowly on technical design issues while neglecting the broader institutional infrastructures that enable such harms. To fill this gap, this paper extends the collection of harms for analysis through a qualitative methodology approach of the existing harm-related literature. Our findings suggest that 80% of NDID-related harms are the product of suboptimal institutions and poor governance models, and that 47.5% of all impacted stakeholders are considered High Risk. By proposing a more accurate harm assessment model, this paper provides academia and the industry with a significant contribution that allows for identifying the possibility of NDID-related harms at an embryonic state and building the necessary infrastructure to prevent them.

Paper Citation

in Harvard Style

Corti G., Sassetti G., Sharif A., Carbone R. and Ranise S. (2025). Enhancing National Digital Identity Systems: A Framework for Institutional and Technical Harm Prevention Inspired by Microsoft’s Harms Modeling. In Proceedings of the 22nd International Conference on Security and Cryptography - Volume 1: SECRYPT; ISBN 978-989-758-760-3, SciTePress, pages 723-728. DOI: 10.5220/0013601400003979

in Bibtex Style

@conference{secrypt25,
author={Giovanni Corti and Gianluca Sassetti and Amir Sharif and Roberto Carbone and Silvio Ranise},
title={Enhancing National Digital Identity Systems: A Framework for Institutional and Technical Harm Prevention Inspired by Microsoft’s Harms Modeling},
booktitle={Proceedings of the 22nd International Conference on Security and Cryptography - Volume 1: SECRYPT},
year={2025},
pages={723-728},
publisher={SciTePress},
organization={INSTICC},
doi={10.5220/0013601400003979},
isbn={978-989-758-760-3},
}

in EndNote Style

TY - CONF

JO - Proceedings of the 22nd International Conference on Security and Cryptography - Volume 1: SECRYPT
TI - Enhancing National Digital Identity Systems: A Framework for Institutional and Technical Harm Prevention Inspired by Microsoft’s Harms Modeling
SN - 978-989-758-760-3
AU - Corti G.
AU - Sassetti G.
AU - Sharif A.
AU - Carbone R.
AU - Ranise S.
PY - 2025
SP - 723
EP - 728
DO - 10.5220/0013601400003979
PB - SciTePress