Identity, Security & Me

I feel really far behind at the moment. I have been so busy working to meet project deadlines that I have neglected my blog. As I think I have said before, this hasn’t been helped by very limited connection on the client site and no hotel internet (I didn’t realise there were still such places

However, I am now making a concerted effort to catch up with everyones’ blogs that I currently subscribe to as well as update my own. I have been doing some interesting project work around WS-S and SAML 2 recently so hopefully I will find chance to blog about it.

However, my most exciting purchase recently was my home broadband. For some time now I have been on 1MB which has been fine for most things. However, with my 12 month contract coming up for renewal I decided to have a scout around for a better deal and i’m glad I did as I have certainly found one.

Without boring you with all the details, if you want a current good deal for home broadband/phone in the UK, check out Orange.

Today I saw from Kevin Miller’s blog that he has released an Identity Selector for Firefox. I know he isn’t the first and Chuck Mortimer has also got one, but Kevin’s is the first I have had chance to download and try.

As suggested in his post, I tried it on Chuck’s sample page but received an error (must look into it and try again). Therefore, I tried it on Ping Identity’s relying party sample site and it worked a treat.

Well done Kevin (and Cowboy). Great work!

Technorati Tags: identity selector, firefox, infocard, cardspace, identity

CA OEM’s PingFederate

I saw this today on both Andre Durand’s and Ping Identity’s blogs.

I was sat with a smug look on my face while I was reading this.

Whilst I was on-site implementing a federation solution utilising CA eTrust SiteMinder last year (October 2005), I remember telling my CA Partner Manager at the time that CA should either buy Ping Identity or at least OEM PingFederate to replace what CA called their “Affiliate Agent”.

It seems that someone was listening to me! I don’t profess to have instigated this, but at least it shows that I do have SOME sensible ideas!!

Technorati Tags: PING, CA, identity, federation

As a consultant in the field of Identity Management, for some time I have felt that I wanted to participate more with helping to drive the standards and the industry forward. I am already on the Identity Gang and find it very informative. I even chip in when I have something interesting to say.

Unfortunately, not being in the US I don’t get to go to most of the Identity ‘unconferences’ that are held. Therefore, I have done what I consider the next best thing and joined the OASIS consortium. This was made possible by my current employer been a sponsor organisation. Initially, I have joined the following committees:

• Security Services (SAML) - Member
• Provisioning Services - Observer
• XRI Data Interchange (XDI - Observer

I hope to be able to contribute with the advancement of these standards, particularly SAML, which I have had the “pleasure” (I think thats the right word) of using in a number of deployments in the past, including my current project.

Technorati Tags: OASIS, standards, XRI, SAML, identity, security

After recommendations on their blogs from Dick Hardt and Phil Windley, I recently finished reading Identity Crisis by Jim Harper.

Phil gives a very good summary of the book here.

I was very impressed with the book from start to finish and found it hard to put down. It started off fairly light talking about the different types of identifiers that we have but then moved onto some very hot identity topics (especially prevelant in the UK at the moment) such as National ID cards. The book had some very good analogies which helped to explain topics or put them into context.

Jim lays out some very strong arguments for why Identification shouldn’t be the ‘default’ behaviour.

If you are looking for a book to read, I would highly recommend it.