“Government is not reason; it is not eloquent; it is force. Like fire, it is a dangerous servant and a fearful master.“
–George Washington, 1732-1799
Technorati Tags: George Washington, Government, Freedom
I am pleased to announce the publication of Identity & Policy: A Common Platform for a Pervasive Policy Paradigm, by Sun colleague Rakesh Radhakrishnan and Dr. Ramaswamy Chandramouli, published by Futuretext.
“The objective of this book is to explore the strategic significance, market requirements and all the potential possibilities of leveraging Standards based Identity and Policy Systems for an Enterprise IT environment (& Enterprise Architecture) and Telecom environment to provide a pragmatic view for the future in network convergence based on NGN and converged services based on Service Oriented Architecture.”
Congratulations Rakesh and Ramaswamy on extending our education in these critical Identity Management concepts.
Technorati Tags: Identity, Identity Management, Digital Identity, Policy
I met Sun colleague James Falkner for the first time on the phone yesterday and had a good chat about his work with Project WebSynergy, an initiative within the OpenPortal project. Coincidentally, it was just announced Wednesday that Project WebSynergy Stable Build 2 is now available for download:
“In May of this year, Sun and Liferay announced a partnership to jointly develop next generation enterprise portal technology. The Sun portal team has since begun the rollout of “Project WebSynergy,” codename for the initiative to release a product based on this common technology.
“The Project WebSynergy team is now proud to make its Stable Build 2 available for download! This release represents a significant milestone for the project, incorporating a number of new features, improvements, and a general enhancements over the last stable build.”
It is encouraging to see the innovation occurring as bright Sun people team with bright folks at Liferay to build a remarkable solution. I look forward to some more exciting stuff coming down the pike.
Technorati Tags: WebSynergy, OpenPortal, Liferay, Portal
I got a kick out of new Sun employee and BSC blogger Jason Calloway’s maiden post. He admitted “sipping” the Sun Kool-aid.
Glad you are aboard, Jason, drinking Kool-aid with the rest of us.
Technorati Tags: Sun Microsystems, Kool-aid
I once heard there is really only one lawyer joke … the rest of them are true!
With that bit of wisdom in mind, we honor corporate attorneys today with another bit of wise insight from our friends at Dilbert.
In his recent Network World article, Dave Kearns challenged the Identity Management industry to give special focus to validation in the process of issuing authentication credentials or creating user accounts:
” … validation – ensuring that the account that gets created accurately reflects the true identity of the entity that it’s created for. This step can overcome much of the identity fraud (what the popular press calls “identity theftâ€) that is prevalent today.”
Much of the ongoing controversy swirling around OpenID gets down to this basic issue. If OpenID credentials (or any credentials for that matter) can be issued to a person without verifying their true identity, the potential specter of fraud looms large.
However, as Dave also points out, users are slow to accept any methods that require extra effort:
” … users, as most of us know, are more reluctant to change than a baseball player on a hitting streak. Getting the changes implemented is going to be a slow slog … “
Short of government mandated and enforced identification processes that include fingerprinting and retina scans, I’m not sure how bullet-proof validation will occur, but perhaps we will develop methods with acceptable levels of risk that improve over what we have now. A Google search on “identity validation” yields a wide variety of disparate efforts in this area. The Wikipedia article on “Identity Score” highlights methods for “tagging and verifying the legitimacy of an individual’s public identity.” Many smart people are addressing the subject, but there is much more work to be done.
Technorati Tags: Identity, Identity Management, Digital Identity, Validation, Dave Kearns
Please join me in watching the XMLGrrl herself, Eve Maler, speak at last week’s Gnomedex 8.0 conference, as presented on Chris Pirillo Live. Eve articulately addressed the topic “The Care and Feeding of Online Relationships,” covering timely issues related to humans’ online relationships with networked applications.
Technorati Tags: Identity, Identity Management, Digital Identity, Eve Maler, Gnomedex
AegisUSA today announced the release of “AegisUSA Identity Solution Set – Mid Market Offering“, a comprehensive Identity Management solution specifically for mid-market sized businesses. Packaging Sun’s industry-leading Identity Manager product with proven methods for implementation, training and support services on a fixed-price basis, Aegis is able to offer complete Identity Management solutions at a price point mid market businesses can afford.
“The businesses in the mid market segment have unique needs that companies like Aegis have been able to serve extremely well. Sun’s technology combined with Aegis’ and its expertise provide a very attractive solution for mid market companies looking for ways to strengthen their identity management solutions,†said Dave Profozich, Vice President of Software – North America, Sun Microsystems. “With quick implementation time, reduced complexity and simplified support for identity management infrastructures, mid market customers can benefit from a great solution.”
“We offer a unique total solution approach that includes industry-leading Sun Identity Management software and market-proven AegisUSA Identity Software and Services at a fixed price that mid market businesses can afford,†stated AegisUSA CEO Ralph Armijo.
Congratulations to Aegis for taking a bold step into a market that has been clamoring for this type of packaged approach. I look forward to our joint success.
Technorati Tags: Sun Microsystems, Identity, Identity Management, Digital Identity, AegisUSA
Congratulations to the Sun Identity Management User Group in the Chicago area for holding their third user group meeting! Scott Fehrman posted a synopsis of the meeting on his blog.
The Sun Identity Manager Developer Wiki, which I blogged about a few days ago, was launched as an outgrowth of this meeting. On that site, registered users can share their workflows, forms, and other artifacts with the community.
If you wish to be informed (sent emails) of User Group activities, please send an email to RequestChicagoIdmLUG at Sun dot COM and you will be added to the mailing list.
Technorati Tags: Sun Microsystems, Identity, Identity Management, Digital Identity, Chicago
