Wednesday’s fourth Identity Management session in the Burton Group Catalyst Conference featured Bob Blakley, Vice President and Research Director of the Burton Group. Key points include:

• We know our own Identities and expect others to be perfectly reasonable – like we are.
• In order to predict others’ behavior we build identities for others, based on our interactions with them.
• Businesses build Identities in relationships, too.
• In the expanding Identity universe, more distant relationships produce less accurate Identities.
• Long tail commerce means less frequent interaction with people who are not closely associated with the business.
• In order for a business to build accurate Identities of customers, it needs to find a way to make frequent, accurate observations of people.
• If information collection systems are overt, people resist them. Relationships give an atmosphere for better data collection that results in stronger Identity models.
• Two good relationships are much better than one bad one. Intermediaries who have relationships with two parties are frequently helpful.
• Relationship Is the context which protects the security and privacy of Identity information.
• Burton has proposed a relationship object to define relationships in a way that can be used by online systems.
• Types of relationships in that model include
• Custodial – interaction tends to be close. Each party acts in the best interest of each other.
• Contextual – primary interaction is through an intermediary. Both parties agree to abide by a commonly agreed upon set of restrictions
• Transactional – interaction is through an intermediary IDP to facilitate a transaction. A person may not reveal who he is.
• Relationships like the credit card model where the card issuer assigns very little fraud liablity to the card holder tend to build trust.
• Companies that succeed online will have close billing relationship with customers. Telcos are there now. Startups are seeking to build such relationships.

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