Although the transition to a digital society has been gradual, COVID-19 has raised expectations for digitalization. In this context, the Internet and the Web have developed as the digital society's foundation and have defined data transfer protocols. However, many data management systems, including establishing digital identity management to identify oneself in cyberspace, are siloed and dependent on individual services such as platform providers. There is little possibility of external verification; thus, users are forced to believe the service providers. To break through this situation, the "Trusted Web Promotion Council" was launched by the Cabinet Secretariat in October 2020, and the "Trusted Web White Paper ver. 2.0" was published in July 2022. The Trusted Web architecture proposes a new framework that increases the degree of Trust (in other words, the degree to which the other party behaves as expected) by an approach that creates an overlay on top of the current Internet.
In response to this trend, a group of faculty members in charge of the project established the Trusted Internet Architecture Lab at the SFC Research Institute in collaboration with Fujitsu Limited, intending to construct a new Internet architecture with Trust in mind so that people can use the Internet with confidence. The "Trusted Internet Architecture Lab" was established as a laboratory of the SFC Research Institute in collaboration with Fujitsu Limited.
When students try to understand the Trusted Internet, it is necessary to foster systematic knowledge from multiple perspectives. Therefore, firstly, this lecture will provide an understanding of the concept of the Trusted Web, which establishes a framework that allows for increased Trust in the Internet. Secondly, this lecture also provides an overview of the basic knowledge required to implement the Trusted Internet and how learners can combine basic knowledge to achieve it. Through this course, we aim to develop human resources who understand the concepts of the Trusted Web and Trusted Internet, which are expected to develop in the future, and who can help build the next generation ICT infrastructure.
The lecture will consist of four parts. First, the lecture will summarize the discussions leading up to the Trusted Web and discuss digital identity-related technologies. Secondly, the lecture will review the components of each application service that uses digital identities, the technologies required to build digital identities, and how these components have been assembled. Third, we will introduce the recently standardized Verifiable Credentials technology, the essential technology for building the Trusted Web, and explain how this technology allows Trust to be freely expressed. Fourth, we will deepen our understanding of the possibilities by knowing and understanding various use cases. Furthermore, we introduce the importance of international standardization in these discussions, and we will also discuss the importance of non-technical factors such as governance in actual deployment and operation. In addition to a certain depth of understanding of these technologies, we aim to develop human resources who can contribute to designing and constructing advanced and trustworthy digital systems by developing a comprehensive discussion of their actual use, standardization, and governance.