Yesterday, my Identity was verified by the Tru.ly identity validation service.  With that in place, if your browser is equipped with a Tru.ly browser extension, you can visit me on Facebook or LinkedIn and see that I am tru.ly verified.

I think tru.ly faces an uphill battle to build critical mass both of people with tru.ly validated identities and of people who really care.  While that battle progresses, I’ll keep you updated as I learn more.

Last Thursday, I tried unsuccessfully to register for the new Identify Validation service provided by Tru.ly.  On Friday, I got a nice email from a Tru.ly representative, responding to my blog and Twitter posts, thanking me for my access attempt and inviting me to try again.

This afternoon, my registration effort was successful.  Tru.ly verified the bits of Identity information I provided, and issued my very own Tru.ly URL – tru.ly/mgd – plus the QR code included in this post and on the blog sidebar.

You can see my verification information by visiting tru.ly/mgd, by clicking on the QR code or by scanning the QR code with your mobile device.  It worked just fine on my iPhone using the QRReader app.

What does a Base Hit have to do with Identity Verification?

Since Spring Training has started in Arizona, baseball analogies came to mind.  I assigned my first failure at Tru.ly registration “Strike 1.”  I’ll call my current success a “base hit.” The registration worked, but I’m not really sure what its real value is yet.  We’ll have to wait awhile to see what brings me across home plate.

Over the past few years, I have been intrigued with the subject of Identity Validation – being able to determine, which a high degree of confidence, that a person is whom he says he is, prior to issuing Identity credentials to him.

Today, I became aware of Tru.ly, that promises to “[maximize] personal privacy by providing users with a single, verified identity on the internet.”  A lively Twitter conversation among Identity experts @dak3 @NishantK @paulmadsen and @iglazer convinced me that I should check it out.

But alas, when I tried to join Tru.ly (twice), I got this nasty error message:

My only comment is ARRGGGGGH! I guess I’ll try again tomorrow to join the latest service that promises to save the world.

A lot of water has passed under the proverbial bridge since I first blogged about Cardspace in June 2006.  You’ve gotta love Paul Madsen’s commentary on Cardspace’s current status:

This reminds me of my favorite quote from the novel and movie, The Scarlet Pimpernel:

We seek him here, we seek him there,
Those Frenchies seek him everywhere.
Is he in heaven? — Is he in hell?
That damned, elusive Pimpernel.

Makes you wonder … just how will we remember Cardpace and all that was said about it?

I recently stumbled across an interesting site, Klout.com, which analyzes a Twitter account’s history and assigns a “Klout Score,” which is purported to be a “measurement of your overall online influence.

Of course, my inquisitive nature as it is, I had to try it for my Twitter account, @mgd.  The results were not great, but respectable, I suppose:

By contrast, the Klout Score of my favorite Phoenix Suns tweeter, Jared Dudley, was 70.

The three major components of the score are:

• True Reach – the real size of your engaged audience.
• Amplification Probability – the likelihood that your content will be acted upon.
• Network Influence – the influence level of your engaged audience.

Additionally, Klout offered a categorization for my twitter account.

I am certainly not a celebrity, but I do try to be consistent and focused.  I have a small number of followers who seem to be fairly well engaged.

For example, after I had received my Klout store, I joked on Twitter,

“Let’s hope that low @Klout doesn’t mean low worth.”

An “engaged” Twitter follower responded with this encouraging note:

“@mgd I’m sure our worth as human beings is not related to Klout. :)”

That was certainly good news.  I am glad that my intrinsic worth really isn’t dependent on my Twitter Klout score.  I was reminded of the profound observation printed on a framed picture my wife gave me many years ago:

“In a hundred years from now it will not matter what my bank account was, the type of house I lived in, or the kind of clothes I wore.  But the world may be much different, because I was important in the life of a child.”

The bottom line? Klout is interesting, but has little to do with my value as a human being and the impact I can make on things that really matter.

Some information doesn’t go out of date quickly.  This afternoon I stumbled across a post by Wilma Colon-Ariza who published a helpful article entitled “Identity Theft and Phishing Scams” last January.  Its content is still timely.

She first notes:

The federal government reports that identity theft is now the fastest-growing financial crime. Every 79 seconds, a thief steals someone’s identity and opens accounts in the victim’s name.

I don’t know what the current statistics are, but guess they are worse.

After commenting on an “Identity Theft Prevention Act” which took effect in New Jersey, on January 1, 2006, Wilma proceeded to provide a very practical outline of how consumers can protect themselves against Identity Theft and Phishing attempts. 

Finally, if you become a victim of Identity Theft, you can refer to specific steps Wilma provided to get things back in order.

Thanks, Wilma, for an informative and practical post, even it took me a long time to read it!

Please join us for a set of informative discussions about Information Security in the Oracle Security Online Forum, sponsored by Oracle and Accenture, where leading industry executives and Oracle product experts will come together to discuss security trends, best practices, and proven solutions for your business.

The illustrious lineup includes:

• Mary Ann Davidson, Oracle’s Chief Security Officer—on industry-leading standards, technologies, and practices that ensure that Oracle products—and your entire system—remain as secure as possible
• Jeff Margolies, Partner, Accenture’s Security Practice—on key security trends and solutions to prepare for in 2011 and beyond
• Tom Kyte, Senior Technical Architect and Oracle Database Guru—on how you can safeguard your enterprise application data with Oracle’s Database Security solutions
• Vipin Samar, Vice President of Oracle Database Security Solutions—on new approaches to protecting data and database infrastructure against evolving threats
• Nishant Kaushik, Oracle’s Chief Identity Strategist—on how organizations can use Oracle Identity Management solutions to reduce fraud and streamline compliance

Additionally, security solution experts will be on live chat throughout the event to answer your toughest questions.

You can register for the event here.

Hope to “see” you there.

Tonight I was honored to participate in a delightful dinner at Hotel Monaco in San Francisco, hosted by our friends from PwC.  Ironically, the first topic of conversation around our table was started by Danielle Butke, whom I have known for several years.  Back in June, 2006, I posted on this blog a less-than-flattering photo I took of her taken at the Catalyst Identity Management conference.  I later posted a better photo, but apparently, Danielle has been the subject of a lot of ribbing over the years from her PwC colleagues because of those photos, so she requested tonight that I remove the photos from my  blog.  I am pleased to report that all photos of Danielle have been successfully removed from this blog and my Flickr account.  All that remains are mysterious frames where Danielle’s face used to grace the pages:

But around the dinner table, we agreed that I needed to replace the photos.  We chose Rex Thexton, PwC Identity Management guru extraordinaire, to replace Danielle on my blog.  So here is Rex on the left, striking his best “Velocity” pose. 

Plus, for good measure, on the right is my Oracle colleague Joe Palastro, who happened to be sitting next to me and somewhat reluctantly agreed that I could post his photo.

Sorry about the the grainy photos, but what more can an iPhone offer?

Thank you, my good friends, for a delightful evening and memories!

Here is to a great year ahead of us!

Obama Eyeing Internet ID for Americans – Tech Talk – CBS News.

Do we really want the President – or any federal official – establishing our personal Internet ID’s?  Sounds like government over-reach to me.

As a holder of a lowly exhibit pass at the Gartner IAM Summit, the only conference session where I was officially welcomed was the Oracle vendor session, where Amit Jasuja, Vice President, Oracle Identity Management, addressed the subject, “Bridging the IT and Business Divide with Identity Intelligence.”

Some of the the key points Amit stressed include:

1. A major Identity and Access Management problem is having only a partial view of Identity information that doesn’t give you the complete picture.
2. Correlating identity data can be difficult, because the data resides in multiple identity data silos.
3. The solution is to collect, compile and correlate identity into an Identity Warehouse.
4. Many applications can access and leverage the the Identity Warehouse, including role governance, change management,  IT Audit Policy Monitoring, risk assessment, configuration analysis and access certification.
5. A business glossary, which assign business terms to cryptic technical terms, helps an Identity Warehouse deliver real business value.
6. The Identity Warehouse and related applications help an organization go beyond compliance and build trust in the organization.
7. The Identity Warehouse can provide a complete view of your environment today.
8. Oracle’s solution to tackle these issues is Oracle Identity Analytics.

I like the term “Identity Intelligence.”  Using analytical methods to extract intelligence from massive amounts of identity data is a smart thing to do.

I had a brief discussion last night with a customer who basically said, “We have the data. We just need the ability to manage it and extract the value.” 

Well said.  That’s what Amit’s talk was all about.