How Civic Anchor earns the right to verify someone.
We do not ship convenience at the cost of regulator trust. Every architectural decision below is a deliberate boundary — auditable, contractually enforced, and visible from outside the system.
Architectural commitments
Six commitments we can defend in writing
No raw biometrics on our infrastructure
Capture is on-device. The capture device hashes the live biometric and discards the source frame. We persist only the hash, the user's DID, and the partner-signed evidence VC.
POPIA Operator under written s55 agreements
Every partner institution executes a written Operator agreement before any enrollment. Tier-1 partners (telco / bank) sign bilateral MSAs; Tier-2/3 nodes sign the standard template. No agreement, no enrollment.
Per-jurisdiction regulator framework
Civic Anchor is jurisdiction-portable by design. Each user carries an active ResidencyAnchorVC; the resolver respects the user's active jurisdiction's DPA framework, not the requester's.
In-region data residency
ZA-jurisdictioned users live on infrastructure pinned to af-south-1 (cpt1). Cross-border data flows happen only via the dual-attestation transfer protocol (PRD W8 / M3.7), never silently.
Tamper-evident audit log
Every verification event writes to a hash-chained system audit log (M1.5 SCH-3). Operators, auditors, and the user themselves can verify chain continuity. The audit log is the source of truth in disputes.
Cross-store collusion detection
Same-face cross-store enrollments within 72 hours trigger structural alerts (M2.4 RIC-4). Per-agent and per-institution enrollment bursts trigger statistical alerts (M2.4 RIC-5). Anomalies surface to the compliance dashboard.
Incident disclosure
Material security incidents are disclosed on civicanchor.co.za/status within 72 hours of confirmation, with a follow-up post-mortem within 14 days. Notifications to the Information Regulator follow s22 of POPIA where the incident reaches the threshold.
Information Officer
Data subject rights, POPIA queries, and breach reports go to popi@civicanchor.id.