We’re delighted to announce that Evernym is being acquired by Avast, the world’s largest consumer cybersecurity company.
In 2021, our mission of bringing more humanity to our digital interactions seems more important than ever. Not a month goes by without news of a major hack or breach or another story about social media behemoths abusing their position of trust.
We are incredibly proud of what we have achieved since our founding in terms of driving the Self-Sovereign and Decentralized Identity movements forward. Our team has helped create and develop the specifications for Verifiable Credentials and Decentralized Identifiers, invented and created the world’s leading related open source projects, powered global initiatives like the International Air Transport Association’s Travel Pass, and founded or co-founded among others the Sovrin Foundation, the Trust Over IP Foundation, the Decentralized Identity Foundation, the Good Health Pass Collaborative, and the cheqd network.
Joining forces with Avast represents the next step of our journey and an opportunity to bring the privacy, security, and trust benefits of decentralized identity to the entire world.
We’ll be joining Avast’s growing digital identity division under the leadership of Charlie Walton, who himself joined in June with a mandate to lead the company’s identity business. Charlie is a leading voice in decentralized identity and an innovative veteran in the field.
From our first conversations, it was clear that Avast’s values are closely aligned with those of Evernym. They exist to protect digital freedom for everyone and already have a very strong reputation for protecting individuals, which at the end of the day is what SSI is all about.
In a press release on the acquisition, Avast CEO Ondrej Vlcek added:
“Consumer trust in the online world has been critically compromised. Over 60% of the world’s population has internet access today yet we don’t have adequate provisions in place for these people to prove who they are online. The result is that identity theft, online fraud and account takeovers are growing rapidly, as does digital tracking and surveillance. Our vision for digital freedom is to enable people to manage and retain control over their personal data so that they can interact and transact safely, privately and with confidence. Adding Evernym’s groundbreaking, self-sovereign identity technology to our offering enables us to address this area and is a huge step forward in the realization of our decentralized, portable model.”
We’d like to thank our incredible customers, partners, investors, and team who have brought us to where we are today. We will continue to support our products and the customers who use them, and with the commitment and strength of Avast in our new home, we only expect to accelerate our trajectory and that of the SSI market as a whole.
We couldn’t be more excited for what’s ahead, and what this means for privacy and verifiable credentials globally.
Stay tuned!