International Survey: Smart-ID is the Most Reliable Authentication Solution

30.06.2021

According to a recent survey conducted by international e-identity solutions provider SK ID Solutions, their core product Smart-ID has significantly grown in popularity. Developed in Estonia in 2017, Smart-ID is now already considered to be the most reliable authentication solution in three Baltic countries. In Latvia and Lithuania, where almost five million people live, Smart-ID is also the number one solution for giving legally binding digital signatures that are recognized by every EU member state. This makes Smart-ID a truly international eID solution.

According to the international survey, the three most important criteria that people base their choice of authentication tool on are security, ease of use, and whether it can be used in many e-services. A similar survey conducted by SK ID Solutions in 2018 got the same results about the criteria, but of notice is the fact that in three years, security has become even more important.

Although, according to the survey, people tend to choose authentication tools primarily on the basis of security and are afraid of falling victim to fraud, Google and Facebook are still the most used authentication solutions in four of the surveyed countries – Sweden alone stood out as the country where the authentication solutions of social networks did not make it into the Top 3. However, despite their widespread success, the survey results also show that Google’s, Microsoft’s, and Facebook’s authentication solutions are the least trusted authentication solutions in all five countries.

In Finland, where people trust apps with biometrics issued by banks the most, the most important aspect – right after security – is that the new authentication tool must be easy to start using. Swedes that consider BankID as the most trusted solution also consider it important that the solution be provided by a reliable organization.

Smart-ID meets all these criteria. First, Smart-ID can be used on all smart devices and signing up for an account only takes about 3 minutes, and the account can be created with biometrics. And second, both SK ID Solutions and Smart-ID meet the highest security standards set in EU. SK ID Solutions is regularly audited by international audit agencies and has also been certified according to the ISO 27001 standard. Three million users in the Baltics and almost a thousand commercial and state-owned e-services in different countries who have chosen Smart-ID as their main authentication solution prove that Smart-ID meets all these crucial aspects.

The Importance of Electronic Signatures is Rising Fast

According to the survey, demand for and usage of electronic signatures is rising everywhere. Still, Estonia stands out as the most active country in giving e-signatures. But it is also widespread among people in Sweden and Finland where less than 1% of the target group of people between the ages of 18-65 admit that they do not give e-signatures at all. In general, in all of the surveyed countries the share of people who give e-signatures has risen significantly in the last three years.

In the Baltics, the growth of electronic signatures is powered by Smart-ID and Mobile-ID (also developed by SK ID Solutions and currently used in Estonia and Lithuania), which both provide a secure e-signing feature.

SK ID Solutions’ international authentication tool survey was conducted by the research company RAIT in the Baltics, Finland, and Sweden. The total sample size was 5048 people.

SK ID Solutions, which is celebrating its 20th anniversary in 2021, specializes in international e-identity solutions enabling the citizens of different countries to log in to e-services and give electronic signatures according to the eIDAS regulation. SK ID Solutions’ services are used by 4 million people who make 150 million transactions a month.

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