An old-school solution to identity theft

The calls started coming immediately following the 2017 Equifax data breach. Roughly half of Americans’ Social Security numbers had been compromised, and the Trump administration, congressional staff, and members of the banking and health-care industry all had one question.

“They wanted to know ‘what do we do now?’ ” says Jeremy Grant, a former senior executive adviser for the National Strategy for Trusted Identities in Cyberspace during the Obama administration.

At the time, Congress was considering a series of bills related to the use of Social Security numbers, while the Trump administration was floating the idea of replacing SSNs with another form of nonnumerical identification – possibly a biometric identification or a unique fact about an individual.

Mr. Grant believed in a different and simpler answer, one that has gained attention as a possible solution. Rather than create a new single authenticator that would be costly to develop and difficult to implement – especially for vulnerable

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