Fadwa Mohanna
CEO & Co-founder at One37Facilitating the secure, seamless and safe exchange of personal data
Facilitating the secure, seamless and safe exchange of personal data
“IBM Hyper Protect is giving us the availability, security, and cloud computing that we need in order to offer our enterprise-grade solution and the level of transaction volume and throughput that are necessary for banking and financial services.”
After her identification cards were mistakenly given to someone else at a reception desk, Fadwa Mohanna found herself both powerless and “identity-less,” unable to travel, bank, or access health services. The frustrating process of reestablishing her identity documents inspired her to help others avoid such disempowering situations.
With a background in technology and telecommunications, Fadwa has been actively involved in the startup ecosystem for several years. She co-founded One37 to provide a wallet-based decentralized identity solution with identity-based authentication using digital forms of identification, such as driver’s licenses and employee badges. One37 collaborates with identity verification services (IDVs) to produce trusted digital documents that can be reused across enterprises, ensuring secure and seamless authentication.
Read more“When we decided to focus on enterprise-grade solutions and make our services available to banking and financial organizations, as well as the health sector, it became obvious that we needed a very strong partner in our journey,” recalls Fadwa. She learned about the powerful security capabilities of IBM Z® and IBM Hyper Protect through the IBM Hyper Protect Accelerator program, which introduced her team to the platform’s powerful capabilities in securing sensitive data. The program provided One37 with access to resources that have been vital in building their digital identity solution.
Partnering with IBM validated the vision of the co-founders and helped them refine and scale their technology. Through mentorship, resources, and access to a broader network, IBM Z enabled One37 to enhance their product offering, develop new go-to-market strategies, and position themselves for long-term growth in highly regulated industries.
In addition, partnering with a major Canadian telecom provider gave One37 an extra boost. This led to multiple proofs of concept (POCs) and confirmed that their digital identity solution could be extended to both digital and assisted channels like call centers. They’re now focused on scaling and raising funds to grow further. Fadwa says the IBM Z platform offers a significant competitive advantage as they move forward, helping to ensure that key components are executable inside an IBM Hyper Protect secure enclave, which has been a key selling point. For Fadwa’s clients, the ability to securely store keys in one place across different cloud environments is invaluable.
IBM Hyper Protect, powered by IBM Z, is designed to offer the encryption, scalability, and tamper protection necessary for securely handling sensitive data. Fadwa says this infrastructure is critical for any business looking to safeguard information at scale, especially in industries with strict compliance requirements. “We’re leveraging IBM Hyper Protect and IBM watsonx.ai to offer identity verification, including KYC (Know Your Customer) document verification. Features from IBM, such as AI guardrails, as well as pervasive encryption, are crucial for our fraud prevention offerings,” explains Fadwa.
From big idea to enterprise-grade solutionsFor Fadwa, the experience of replacing her paper-based personal identification led to a whole new career direction as co-founder of a company providing digital identity solutions for enterprises. Her advice for a fledgling startup would be, “Talk to IBM. If you’re a startup that aims to offer an enterprise-grade solution to banks, airlines, telcos, and health providers, you need to have the best on your team.”
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