Kate O'Flaherty considers the security challenges in the metaverse and investigates how they can be resolved
It’s official – whether people like it or not, the metaverse is coming, and if recent reports are to be believed, it’s going to be led by firms including Facebook owner Meta. The metaverse, however, is also a security and privacy minefield, partly due to the sheer scale of the soon-to-be-realized virtual worlds.
As the technology continues to develop, some companies are already taking their first (cautious) steps into the metaverse. Sportswear brand Nike is one: the firm has partnered with online gaming platform Roblox to create a virtual world called Nikeland.
Others, including Microsoft, Facebook and Google, will provide the overarching experience across the metaverse as virtual worlds emerge over the coming months and years. Online gaming ecosystems such as Second Life, Roblox and Decentraland also have a central part to play.
When it arrives, the metaverse will be an open-ended collection of digital experiences, environments and assets leveraging virtual technologies, says Roberto Schiavulli, head of games and immersive experiences at Dark Slope, a metaverse and virtual production company.
He explains that this will include virtual and augmented reality and a complimentary digital economy. “It’s helpful to think of the metaverse in the same way we think of the internet: less a single tool or platform than the combined sum of these experiences.”
The metaverse is rapidly expanding, creating urgent security issues to address. Among the concerns, verification is key to ensuring people can’t spoof their identity. Another challenge is the vast amounts of sensitive data such as biometrics which, alongside cryptocurrencies used to make purchases, will make the virtual worlds hugely attractive to cyber-criminals.
Nation-states, hacktivists and criminals all stand to benefit from poor data security and privacy practices in the metaverse. So how can the security challenge of the century be resolved?
Verification in the Metaverse
Verification in the metaverse is one of the biggest challenges to overcome. A system where people can attend appointments with a doctor or lawyer will depend heavily on authentication of their real-world identity, Will Richmond-Coggan, a data protection expert at Freeths LLP points out.
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