Dragonchain Inc., the blockchain distributed ledger incubated by a Walt Disney Co. team, today announced that the company is spinning off its decentralized identity technology Dragon Factor to a new entity, MyFii.

MyFii will launch an improved version of Factor that uses blockchain-based technology to provide secure and decentralized identity services for enterprise, healthcare, financial technology and social media. Factor has been operating as a platform, as part of Dragonchain, for more than two years.

Factor is part of a type of service that provides enhanced security for personal information designed to enable protection of sensitive data alongside the ability to vet and to share it with permitted parties.

For example, with Factor, businesses and users can gain access to a General Data Protection Regulation and California Consumer Privacy Act complaint system that protects confidential information by generating unique identifiers that can replace the use of usernames, emails and phone numbers for consumer identity.

The system also integrates identity providers who act as verification sources for different “factors” of individually verifiable data about a user without exposing any unnecessary information.

A factor can be an atomic piece of identity information at any level of granularity. For example, a factor could be a birth date, home address, verified email address or any other personally identifying information. And “derived factors,” such as if a person is over 21 years old, can also be checked with a “yes or no” answer to reduce the amount of information revealed.

That’s important because Factor is designed to enable users to own and manage their own personal information and identifying factors, including which identity providers to use and which entities can access that information.

A wide variety of companies have already integrated Factor into their own identity management systems or are in the process of piloting the system. They include a number of companies in healthcare, fintech and social media. For example, SafePass, from Medek Health Systems LLC, is already using Factor to help Americans safely get back to work in the midst of the current global health crisis during the COVID-19 quarantine.

To do that, SafePass uses Factor to enable individuals to stay in control of their own health data. The solution allows workers to identify themselves and confirm their COVID-19 case status following guidance from the Food and Drug Association’s Digital Health Policies and Public Health Solutions for COVID-19, in a manner consistent with the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act or HIPAA.

“Our SafePass app requires the highest level of privacy while also balancing public health,” Jan Lubeck, lead developer at Medek Health. “Factor gives our users control of their data, providing proof to both them and SafePass. Without Factor we couldn’t offer the privacy our users desire.”

MyFii will act as the entity that will allow Factor to offer data ownership and management services to individuals, developers, companies, universities and governments under current regulatory frameworks. It will allow enterprises to handle Know Your Customer requirements and healthcare organizations comply with HIPAA, without the need to directly handle any personally identifiable information.

Image: Dragonchain