Trust is what underpins identity and security on the internet. But existing solutions don’t work for today, yet alone the future.

Online trust today is rooted in the URL — the address of a website. What worked as a globally unique identifier for a webpage in the 1990s doesn’t work as a human-friendly identifier today. People can’t accurately read URLs, leaving many vulnerable to phishing attacks, and resulting in the stratospheric rise in phishing and cybercrime. URLs don’t work for web identity and naming — they shouldn’t be front and centre of the web experience for trust purposes.

There are a number of anti-phishing products now available, with consumer services like Google Safe Browsing built into popular browsers, and specialised business cybersecurity products. Despite a range of technical controls, they don’t catch enough phish. Most solutions work on a reactive blocklist model, which although aided by user reports and machine learning, is not enough to keep up with the rising tide of phishing. People are often left to make trust decisions, and sadly with the effect of compelling social engineering, too often the wrong decisions.

Lots of people see the website name, logo, brand design and padlock, and are convinced the website is safe and official, and proceed to provide sensitive information to the masquerading website, stealing credentials and defrauding the user.

What if there was an environment where user-recognisable and human-trusted brand names that are seen in daily life can be authentically used on the web? What if you could work within a safety net, a trust network, working to protect you with active intelligence and only including sites known to be trusted. Not the other way round. What if there was a network safe and secure by design and by default.

We believe there is a way to reach this and achieve real trust online. At Epi, trust is our foundation. We believe in a world where web resources are identified by authentic human-centric names, and where there are secure networks comprising only official websites. We help to make sure that you are really visiting the site you intend to.