To support recent discussions about Identity Management and Cloud computing, I divided the types of Identity Services that might be needed to support Application services into three major categories as shown in the following diagram and explained in a bit more detail below:

The specific services provided in each category could include:

Identity Administration Services

• Create, update, delete identities
• Password/credential management
• Entitlement definition/management
• Provision/de-provision access privileges
• Role engineering/management
• Policy definition/management

Identity Enforcement Services

• Authentication
• Authorization
• Access control
• Federation
• Web services security

Identity Audit Services

• Reporting
• Evaluation
• Attestation
• Validation
• Remediation

Did I miss any services that you think should be present?  Any input on the categories or types of services?  Any input or criticism would be most welcome.

The following chart may be helpful as we consider the different types of users that should be addressed by Identity and Access Management (IAM) technology and processes in cloud computing.

At the Platform as a Service (PaaS) and Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) layers, the only users are administrators of the platform or infrastructure services, respectively.  However, these administrative users may be either on the provider side or on the recipient or enterprise side.  End users, whether within the enterprise (employees or contractors) or external to the enterprise (customers and partners), only exist at the application layer or Software as as Service (SaaS) layer.

This illustrates how cloud computing introduces increased complexity into IAM. Not only do the different layers (PaaS, IaaS and SaaS) have unique requirements, but multiple organizations (e.g. provider and enterprise) need to be considered.

For example, the nature of PaaS services will require provider administrators to have root access to the operating system, while enterprise administrators at the SaaS level may only need access to application configuration functions and external SaaS users only need to access to selected application functions.

Hopefully, this provides food for thought as we explore IAM in cloud computing.  I’d be grateful to hear your comments.

Last Thursday, January 21st, I gave a presentation at the Sun Horizons conference, “Healthcare Integration Through a New Perspective.”  The title of my talk was “Identity Management: Securing Information in the HIPAA Environment.”  I explored how the complementary functionality of Identity Management and Master Patient Index technologies can enable effective Patient Consent Management, a vital requirement for online health information networks.

A copy of my presentation deck is available for download here.

At the heart of my the presentation was the following diagram, which illustrates major components required in a Patient Consent Management system:

A brief explanation of key components follows:

Identity and Role Repository

IAM technology and methods provide the foundation for an effective patient consent management system.  An Identity and Role Repository contains Identities, roles and access control credentials necessary to support the consent system.  This repository includes:

• Patients
• Providers
• Access Rights
• Roles (map business responsibilities to access rights)
• Override Rights (Only users with specific roles can perform override without consent)

Consent Registry

A consent registry is required to specify what permissions have been granted by patients, within the allowable limits specified by each applicable jurisdiction.   Some of the key attributes include:

• Consent Permissions for
• Patients
• Organizations
• Users
• System-wide mask (everyone)
• Fine gained access
• Include or exclude attributes
• Accommodation for multiple jurisdictions

Master Patient Index

A Master Patient Index enables correlation of patient data across multiple repositories.  This is essential because patient records are typically help in multiple locations.  In other cases, if patient records exist in the same physical data warehouse, they are often logically separated. 

Federated Data Access

If patient data is located in physically or logically separate locations, Federated data access controlled allows access across domain boundaries without compromising the privacy or integrity of individual patient record repositories.

Data Access Services

By providing a set of centralized data access services governed by IAM, the Consent Registry and the Master Patient Index, a secure method of patient data access is possible.

Semantics: “The study of meaning”

This morning I read a thought-provoking article by my associate Mark Montgomery entitled “Systemic failures, by design.” The article proposes that in many high-profile cases, catastrophes could have been averted or moderated if appropriate semantic-based analysis and action had been taken, based on data that existed prior to the event:

Over the course of the past dozen years the U.S. has experienced a series of dangerous and costly systemic failures throughout our security and regulatory framework. The unfettered bubble in technology, missed opportunities to prevent 9/11—leading to two ongoing wars, the tragic response to Katrina, the largest financial crisis in history, the Fort Hood massacre, and the ‘underwear bomber’ incident on Christmas Day all share one commonality.

In each of these cases, data had been collected by U.S. government agencies that contained a high probability of either entirely preventing or substantially mitigating each event, if only the information had been recognized and acted upon within the window of time allowed by circumstances. In case after case, repeated warnings by recognized experts, sourced internally and externally, were ignored or suppressed.

In the past few months, I blogged a couple of times about the use of data analytics with Digital Identity:

• Identity Trend 9: Identity Analytics

• Anonymized” Data Really Isn’t

In his address at Digital ID World, Jeff Jonas’ discussion about using data analytics to discover space-time-travel characteristics of individuals was both challenging and disturbing. He proposed that advanced analytic techniques could be effectively used to pinpoint the identities of people of interest based on patterns of use of mobile phones and other data sources readily available today.

While there is certainly danger of loss of freedom to ordinary citizens due to government surveillance, it is apparent that a much better job of identifying and acting upon potential threats and the identities of people involved is quite possible if existing data, lawfully acquired, is more effectively analyzed in meaningful (aka semantic) ways.

Next Thursday, January 21st, I will be giving a presentation at the Sun Horizons conference, “Healthcare Integration Through a New Perspective.”  My topic will be “Identity Management: Securing Information in the HIPAA Environment,”  I will explore how the complementary functionality of Identity Management and Master Patient Index technologies can enable effective management of Patient Consent Management, a vital requirement for online health information networks.

If you would like to discuss the topic or meet me in Washington, DC, please drop me a line.  After the event, I’ll post my presentation deck for review.

Today, I imported all entries from the Discovering Identity blog from blogs.sun.com into my WordPress blog at DiscoveringIdentity.com.  I believe that I will have more flexibility in publishing my blog and associated content using the WordPress publishing engine than was available on the Roller site.

The blog is now hosted at Dreamhost, which has excellent facilities for hosting WordPress blogs.

I will double-post content to both the DiscoveringIdentity.com and blogs.sun.com sites for the forseeable future, but do not intend to provide further upgrades to the structure of the blogs.sun.com site.

  If you care to follow my postings on the new site, please bookmark the RSS feed.

Thanks to the help of Henry Story, who recently presented the concepts of FOAF (an acronym of Friend of a friend) in a Sun Identity Interest teleconference forum, I have begun to experiment a bit with the technology.

According to the FOAF Wikipedia article:

FOAF is a descriptive vocabulary expressed using the Resource Description Framework (RDF) and the Web Ontology Language (OWL). Computers may use these FOAF profiles to find, for example, all people living in Europe, or to list all people both you and a friend of yours know. This is accomplished by defining relationships between people. Each profile has a unique identifier (such as the person’s e-mail addresses, a Jabber ID, or a URI of the homepage or weblog of the person), which is used when defining these relationships.

The FOAF project, which defines and extends the vocabulary of a FOAF profile, was started in 2000 by Libby Miller and Dan Brickley. It can be considered the first Social Semantic Web application, in that it combines RDF technology with ‘Social Web’ concerns.

The FOAF project provides a way for me to maintain my personal Identity profile and link to others I know, creating a global social graph of acquainted people.  I don�t know much yet, but am intrigued by its possibilities.

You can visit my FOAF Card by clicking here, or view the XML for the corresponding FOAF file by clicking here.

If you have a FOAF file and would like to be added to my �knows� list, please send my the URL for your FOAF file.

Thanks!  I�ll keep you updated on my progress.

It is almost Christmas Eve.  In the midst of an insomnia episode, I conjured up a crazy notion of making a Christmas wish list of things I want from a Personal Identity-Persona Service (PIPS).   Your list may be different, but here�s mine.

1. Secure Identity Bank Vault for my Identity Profile and Credentials.  Of all the potential Identity Providers jostling for prominence in the market, I favor my bank the most.  They take pretty good care of my money, enable me to selectively send some of my money to other people, and seem to be sensitive to the issues surrounding security, privacy, liability and potential cyber threats.  I think I could trust them to take good care of my online Identity.  Think of it as the bank providing a safe deposit box for all the Identity attributes that I want to store and use, and providing the means to selectively take out Identity attributes for presentation to other people.  This vault should be located in a secure cloud, so I can get access from any computer or mobile device of my choice.  I think this is a concept even my technology-challenged wife, mother and father could readily understand and accept. 
2. Really Easy to use Identity/Profile/Persona Editor.  With my Secure Identity Bank Vault in place, I need a really easy to use way to fill that vault with my Identity information and maintain it over time.  This will include the information I would normally include provide to an online merchant or social network, as well as subsets of such information that I can define for the purpose of presenting different personae to facilitate different online experiences.
3. Multiple Levels of Identity Assurance or Validation.  I want to make sure that other people can�t impersonate me by setting up a  fake Identity Bank Vault for Mark Dixon that could be used to conduct illicit transactions.  To do that, methods need to be in place to validate the claims I make about my identity, such as birthplace, social security number, credit card numbers, etc.  Progressively rigorous checks of my background information will allow me to confidently present Bronze, Silver, Gold or Platinum Identity credentials to enable different levels of online interaction.
4. Really Easy to use Persona Selector.  I need the ability to easily select from a set of personae I have defined in the Identity Bank Vault.   For example, I will most likely have one persona to use for online shopping, one for interaction with state government, and another for using my church website.  This selector needs to be immediately accessible, probably in the browser toolbar.  For mobile use, the persona selector needs to be easily accessed and presented by any online application that requires me to log in or pay for services.
5. Multiple Levels of Secure Authentication.  I want to make sure that no one can access and use my Identity Bank Vault or persona and credentials it contains without my explicit permission.  In some cases, I may want to simply surf the web and virtually window shop by identifying myself with a user name and password.  However, I would like to restrict access to any financial transactions or health care record access by requiring a digital certificate (probably on a USB fob) and perhaps with a fingerprint check (perhaps via that same USB device).
6. Option to Use Separate Personae for Login and Payment.  In some cases, I may want to use an Internet Persona to poke around the web, do some window shopping and try things out.  I may want to log in to Amazon, eBay, Barnes and Noble or other merchants before I decide to buy.  None of these merchants needs to know my credit card information before I decide to buy something.  Therefore, I need an easy method for first identifying myself and subsequently presenting my payment method.
7. Audit Reports.  I would like to get an online �Identity bank statement� each month or on demand, detailing the my use of PIPS service.  This would allow me to verify that all uses were legitimate and would help me determine if adjustments were needed in my profile or use of the service.
8. Fraud Insurance.  If a privacy breach or other unauthrorized use of my Identity or credentials occur through no fault of my own, I would like to be insured against possible damages.  This would be similar to the fraud protection currently provided by credit card companies.

Of course, in order for a PIPS service to be worth much, social Networks, online merchants, government agencies and other relying parties will need to accept my PIPS profile and credentials.   But wouldn�t it be great if I could maintain one set of Identity and Profile information and have that available for consumption by any merchant or social network, according to my wishes?  I would be willing to pay a yearly fee for such a service, much like I pay certain bank fees now. Or, perhaps those fees would be waived if I maintained a certain account balance or averaged a certain transaction volume on a credit card issued by the bank.

Will something like this happen?  I think so.  Probably not in 2010.  By 2015? I certainly hope so.

Many thanks to my good friend Jonathan Gershater for sending me the link to another excellent post about Identity and Healthcare.  I particularly like his illustration of using Federated Identity to facilitate trusted exchange of medical records between different medical service providers. 

A user of any (Healthcare) ServiceProvider, who has been issued a digital identity by the trusted IdentityProvider, may seamlessly interact with the healthcare providers (SPs). The user will present the digital identity issued by the IdP, the SP will verify the Identity, and the user will be granted access to the Service Provider’s application. However, based on the user’s attributes and role, the functionality available to the user will vary.  A physician may alter a medical record but only within their specialty ( a dermatologist cannot alter a prescription for spectacles). A pharmacist may view but not alter the prescription for insulin in a healthrecord.  A patient may only view but not alter their medical record.

Jonathan Gershater recently published an interesting blog post exploring the conceptual differences between the National Health Information Network (NHIN) infrastructure, “a collection of standards, protocols, legal agreements, specifications, and services that enables the secure exchange of health information over the internet,” and an alternate approach known as the Health Internet, “an open-market standards-based approach to enable the exchange and sharing of electronic health data, using existing Internet standard protocols and web technologies.”

Jonathan referenced two informative posts on The Health Care Blog and Practice Fusion’s blog.  I’m still trying to wrap my mind around the significance of these two architectural directions, but it certainly appears that Identity is a critical part of the solution, regardless of what alternative approach or derivatives thereof may emerge.  Any Electronic Health Record (EHR) system must be based upon secure, flexible and scalable Identity Management system.

Thank, Jonathan, for the excellent reference.