---
id: "hardman-progressive-assurance-flexible-organizational"
type: "paper"
type_label: "Papers and paper collections"
title: "Progressive Assurance: Flexible Organizational Identity in the Digital Economy"
maintainer: "Daniel Hardman"
authors:
  - "Daniel Hardman"
date: "2026-05-05"
year: 2026
reading_level: "practitioner"
reading_level_label: "Practitioner"
reading_level_meaning: "architects, product people and adopters who know identity systems"
evidence: "informative"
evidence_meaning: "an author's paper, deck, tutorial or post explaining the suite"
status: "active"
status_meaning: "changed within the last six months, or a live service"
access: "public"
access_meaning: "anyone with the link"
topics:
  - "theory"
  - "governance"
  - "comparisons"
roles:
  - "security-architect"
  - "standards-policy"
  - "communications"
  - "researcher"
source_url: "https://dhh1128.github.io/papers/prog-a.html"
source_license: null
source_license_note: null
found_on: "hardman-papers"
kerisse_credit: false
abstract_license: "CC BY 4.0"
abstract_license_url: "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/"
abstract_attribution: "KSKB, the KERISuite Knowledge Base (https://kskb.dev/)"
last_checked: "2026-10-15"
kskb_url: "https://kskb.dev/cards/hardman-progressive-assurance-flexible-organizational/"
kskb_app_url: "https://kskb.dev/#item/hardman-progressive-assurance-flexible-organizational"
kskb_record_url: "https://kskb.dev/data/kskb/resources/hardman-progressive-assurance-flexible-organizational"
kskb_markdown_url: "https://kskb.dev/export/cards/hardman-progressive-assurance-flexible-organizational.md"
---

# Progressive Assurance: Flexible Organizational Identity in the Digital Economy

A 2026 paper by Daniel Hardman proposing a Progressive Assurance Model for organizational identity: four levels of control assurance (LoA 0 to LoA 3) built on one KERI identifier and one ACDC credential schema, bridging X.509 certificates and the verifiable Legal Entity Identifier (vLEI). It compares the model with X.509, platform badges and STIR/SHAKEN and treats ACDCs as foundational evidence and SD-JWTs as derivative presentations. It is for people designing or choosing organizational identity.

Labels: reading level Practitioner; evidence informative (an author's paper, deck, tutorial or post explaining the suite).
Source: https://dhh1128.github.io/papers/prog-a.html (license not recorded).
The abstract is KSKB's own text under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 (CC BY 4.0), https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/; credit KSKB, the KERISuite Knowledge Base (https://kskb.dev/).