Category: Identity

As more organizations look to implement systems that require authentication at higher levels of assurance, there has been increased interest in transaction-based assurance.

Recently OASIS launched the Electronic Identity Credential Trust Elevation Methods (Trust Elevation) Technical Committee  http://www.oasis-open.org/committees/trust-el/charter.php. The initial deliverable is a comprehensive list of current methods to authenticate identities online to the degree necessary for high value and sensitive transactions. This is expected to be a key input to new real world solutions that use a step-up approach to multi-factor authentication. 

Now AT&T has come out with Personal Levels of Assurance (PLOA), a white paper that introduces a new approach for determining transaction-based assurance.PLOA White Paper – v1.01

I'm looking forward to discussing this and other topics next week at IIW in Mountain View.

 

 

 

Why a Commons for Identity

Mike Neuenschwander did a presentation at Burton Group Catalyst in 2006 about identity as a commons like, air, water or energy. This was one of the slides he put forward to make his point.


It can’t be “owned” by anyone – it is a commons – it all has to work together using open standards and protocols AND these need to give people (users) usable tools that give them control over how identity information about them is shared. It also has to work for corporations.

Is “identity” the right name for the nature of all the problems that we addressing today in this community? The term social web, open social web etc. have all emerged since the community formed and I think some of the key work that has emerged out of the community has helped inform/form the core components underlying the social web (OpenID, OAuth, etc.). I think we can agree that people and their identities (or should we say identifiers?) along with information about them (data, social graph, attention, activities) are foundational to a social web.

The latest installment of the Internet Identity Workshop #8 in May 2009 brought key companies (Microsoft, Google, Apple, MySpace, Facebook, Yahoo!, AOL, Plaxo) together to get a lot of shared work done solving real problems. This is a commons of huge value to everyone participating, and is worth preserving. I have a post on the IIW blog about how we got to where we are and the bumps in the road to building the culture of the community. There is also a post about cultivation of community that has helped form a common culture.