Identity, Security & Me

There are some acquisitions within the Identity space that come as no surprise. For example, when Sun acquired Vaau as a knee-jerk reaction to Oracle’s acquisition of BridgeStream (sorry, I had to get that jibe in), it came as no surprise. Equally, as the other independent role management vendors get bought up, that will be expected also. The only slight surprises may come from who buys who.

However, every now and again a complete left field acquisition shocks the industry. This occurred at RSA with Hitachi announcing it had bought a major share in M-Tech. Everyone seems to be talking about it. Burton, Digital ID World, Dave Kearns, Bruce Schneier etc.

What next, Amstrad buying Courion?

Yesterday, the BBC announced the their iPlayer can now be run on the Wii through the use of the Internet Channel and that they even hope to provide a separate channel to remove the dependancy on the Opera browser.

I had to try it. How cool!!

I’m sure like me you are constantly getting invitations to the myriad of different social networking/web 2.0 sites out there. Personally, I have accounts on:

Facebook
LinkedIn
MySpace
Naymz
Plaxo
Del.icio.us
ClaimID
Technorati
and i’m sure there are others……

I don’t have the time to keep all of these up to date, never mind joining any more.

Looking specifically at the number of social networks out there, surely there has to be a point when these must start to consolidate their functionality. I can see it has already starting happening to a certain extent.

LinkedIn is designed for business relationships. Plaxo extends that so you can categorise people as either business or friends. Similarly, LinkedIn allows you to write an endorsement for someone, whereas, Naymz whole philosophy is based on reputation and references.

I don’t see how all of these sites can be sustainable as we move further into 2008.

As always, I am constantly talking to new people about Identity Management in the Enterprise. We always talk about the usual topics; provisioning, authentication, authorisation, audit etc. More and more recently I have been asked by people what my thoughts are on OpenID. Previously, these types of discussions were limited to the hardcore ID people such as the Identity Gang. But now, I seem to be getting asked the question more and more by people within the Enterprise. A number of times it has been people who don’t really understand what OpenID is, other than its one of the ‘new terms’. Others are more informed.

So what do I think of OpenID and its application in the Enterprise……

I think OpenID so far has done a lot for pushing forward Identity 2.0 and has seen a reasonable adoption within the ’social internet’ (blogs, wikis etc). There is definately a good use case for its application there. However, organisations have not yet really started to adopt this technology. There have been a couple, including Sun who announced an internal OpenID server for employees last year. However, in the main its uptake has been extremely limited.

I have no doubt that eventually OpenID will start to find a place within the Enterprise. However, at the moment, I really can’t see its application within the arena. The problem that I see Enterprises facing when looking at OpenID is the lack of trust in the Identity provider. Anyone can set up an OpenID server (indeed this blog is one) and use it to sign-on to OpenID enabled sites. However, where is the trust that I am indeed Paul Toal when I hit the target site. For enterprise, cross domain single sign-on, federation based on SAML (and the other standards) provides that pre-defined trust agreement. Clearly, what it lacks (and OpenID goes towards addressing) is the user consent.

As long as the trust issue is outstanding I don’t see why Enterprises would adopt OpenID for any transactions of any value (financial or otherwise). There is a big difference from posting a comment on a blog that I have signed onto with my OpenID Identity, to performing a business transaction with an Enterprise partner using my self-asserted OpenID.

The answer to this might be to ensure Enterprises host the OpenID server so that their partners can be assured of trust. However, isn’t that what standard federation today gives us. Do we actually want our employees deciding whether, as an employee their Identity information can or can’t be shared with other business partners?

Maybe I am missing the point (feel free to correct me), but at the moment, I just don’t see where OpenID fits within the Enterprise.

Technorati Tags: OpenID, federation, enterprise, trust

Its been a while since I last posted and I must admit I am way behind on reading other people’s blogs. Things have been hectic both at work and at home. However, I hope to start being a bit more active on my blog now and get back into the swing of posting regularly.

I certainly have plenty to catch up on.

Thanks for sticking with me!

Limitations in the characters that can be used in a URL can make for some interesting interpretations of website names. I can’t believe that the people who came up with these actual real website names didn’t spot their obvious ‘faux pas’.

http://www.expertsexchange.com  ‘Experts Exchange’ or ‘Expert Sex Change’

http://www.whorepresents.com  ‘Who Represents’ or ‘Whore Presents’

http://www.penisland.net  ‘Pen Island’ or ‘Penis Land’

http://www.therapistfinder.com  ‘Therapist Finder’ or ‘The Rapist Finder’

Made me chuckle!!

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Recently there has been a lot of coverage in the media on missing Madeleine McCann.

Initially, there was a massive international manhunt and lots of coverage on all types of media (newspapers, television, radio, internet etc). Everyone was backing the McCanns in the search for their daughter, including a number of famous celebrities such as David Beckham and J.K. Rowling.

However, over the past couple of weeks the Portugese police have turned their attention to the McCanns and have made them suspects in the disappearance of their daughter.

My aim here isn’t to discuss the innocence or guilt of Madeleine’s parents. I’m sure there will be plenty of focus on this in the upcoming weeks and months.

My focus is on the McCanns persona. Within the Identity world there is a lot of talk about a person’s persona and how different personas are portrayed to different groups of people. For example, my work persona is quite different from my home persona. However, the recent events with the McCanns goes to prove that we only have so much control over our persona and how we are portrayed to different people. Alot of this influence comes from the media. In the past week I have seen how the British people have slowly started turning against Madeleine’s parents through no direct actions of the McCanns. It is all based on speculation in the media.

So, whilst the McCanns have not changed their public facing persona towards the world, the influence of the media means that people are viewing them very differently than before.

The McCanns are by no means the only example of this. There are examples (mainly celebrities) of this happening time and time again.

It reminds me of the James Bond film, Tomorrow Never Dies, where the media mogul is trying to control people’s reaction by controlling the information that is provided to them through the media.

I do find it quite disconcerting that the media can have such power of people’s lives.

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San Francisco has redeemed itself.

After my slightly derogatory comments earlier in the week, today I had chance to explore a bit more of the city. After walking round for several hours as well as driving a number of miles around, I managed to find the ‘better’ places in the city.

I would love to come back to San Francisco when I aren’t working and bring my wife. She would love the place. Especially all the designer shops around Union Square!

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I know I have been fairly quiet on the blogging front recently. Not only have I had a lot on at work but I have been travelling quite a bit.

I also find it interesting when I travel to compare the different places I have been and to make some observations. Over the past couple of weeks I have been to both Munich and San Francisco. Unfortunately, I didn’t get chance to see much of Munich so don’t have much information to compare.

However, this week I am in San Francisco. I love America. I have only been here a couple of times (last time was Boston in 2004) but really enjoy it here. Unfortunately, I haven’t had much chance to do a lot of sightseeing due to work (it always gets in the way) but I have managed to see a few things whilst here.

My ‘piece de resistance’ this week was visiting Alcatraz. This has always been a childhood dream, so turning it into reality was fantastic for me. It was just as I expected and thoroughly enjoyed the trip. I would love to go back there again. I have also done a few other obligatory tourist things like drive over the Golden Gate Bridge etc.

Despite my limited time here, I couldn’t help but compare SF to Boston. I must say there seems (to me anyway) to be a stark contrast.

Boston seems clean, spacious and friendly. However, SF seems the opposite. For me it just doesn’t have the same experience. I am stopping in a hotel just off Union Square but despite being central, the area seems a bit rundown. There are tramps and beggars on every street corner and I don’t have the same sense of safety whilst walking down the street as I did in Boston.

I’m sure there are some lovely parts of San Francisco but so far I haven’t managed to find them. It looks like I might have a bit of spare time on Friday so if anyone can suggest some nice places I should see, I would appreciate it. I would hate to leave SF with a negative view of my time here and the city in general.

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