WASHINGTON, D.C. (WBAP/KLIF) — This week, a work group is meeting in Washington to try to find an alternative to social security numbers for identification.
After several notable data breaches, such as the one at Equifax, cyber security experts started calling for the change, saying the SSN has outlived its usefulness.
In a recent interview, White House Cyber Security Coordinator Rob Joyce said the system itself is flawed.
“By interacting with it, you’ve given a key piece of information out publicly that is the identifier that connects you to all sorts of credit and digital information online,” Joyce says.
He says that he’d like for the country to transition to what’s called a “public/private key” system.
That means you would have one identifier that you would give out as a form of ID, but the actual identifier remains a secret.
Robyn Geske, KLIF/WBAP, Copyright © 2017
