Editorial: Why Government Digital ID Must Lead on Security

Over the past year, I have found myself returning to a recurring theme: the transition from physical to digital identity is inevitable, but that transition is not without cost. With the growth of electronic identification (eID) systems comes a shift in both the nature and scale of identity-enabled financial crime.

In the early 2000s, particularly following the 9/11 attacks, identity management rose to the top of national security agendas. The US REAL ID Act of 2005 (which is only now being fully enforced) aimed to standardise the issuance of state identification documents for federal purposes (IDN May 2025). Yet even as governments sought to strengthen physical document security, the parallel rise of online services drove an expansion of digital identity capabilities – often without the same attention to security frameworks.