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

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 theft”) 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

My hat is off to Sun Identity Management expert Jeff Bounds, who set up Sun Identity Manager Developer Wiki on wikis.sun.com:

“This is a repository for Identity Manager customers, partners, and Sun Employees to contribute ideas, code, and tips on how to best use Identity Manager. Anyone can contribute, our only requirement is that you register.”

I look forward to monitoring and contributing to this open forum, which I believe will become a vital part of the Sun Identity Management community.

Technorati Tags: Sun Microsystems, Identity, Identity Management, Digital Identity, Community, Wiki

The terms TIM and TAM are well known in the Identity Management market – short for “Tivoli Identity Manager” and “Tivoli Access Manager”, respectively. Not quite as frequently, some people refer to the Sun Identity Manager and Sun Access Manager products as SIM and SAM.

I propose we combine and shorten those two acronyms to SIAM. It’s comprehensive, catchy and just think, Yul Brynner could be our patron saint!

For those of you too young to remember, Yul Brynner was the bald guy who played the King of Siam in the 1956 classic movie, The King and I. He made baldness cool long before Michael Jordan or Charles Barkley were even born.

Technorati Tags: The King and I, Yul Brenner, Sun Microsystems, Identity, Identity Management, Digital Identity

Obviously, “Discovering Identity” can mean more than the arcane technology I discuss in this blog now and then, according to the Sam’s Club advertisement that dropped into my email box yesterday.

One thing is clear – all of these dorm rooms have a distinctively more picturesque and expansive Identity than the tiny crackerbox in Stover Hall at BYU where I spent the first year of my college life. 🙂

Technorati Tags: Identity, Dorm

Back in the day, when consumer connection to the Internet was in its infancy and some cynics thought online access was just a passing fad, I bought a few shares of AOL stock. It seemed to me that the first company who made it really easy to get and use an online account and email address would grow really rapidly.

I think the value of those shares tripled or quadrupled before I sold them. I should have held on longer.

AOL grew rapidly because they made it easy – really easy – to get on line. You could argue that their version of the Internet was proprietary and walled off, that they were populated with “newbies” who weren’t worthy of the Internet, that a real man wouldn’t be caught dead with an aol.com email address. However, no online access company grew so rapidly or introduced more people to their first Internet experience.

A recent article about FaceBook Connect written by Allan Hoffman of the Star-Ledger got me thinking about AOL’s early growth. Allan proposed that Facebook may become the de facto standard Identity Provider for the Internet:

” … the social networking phenomenon that is Facebook may soon become the keeper of your online identity. …

” … Because Facebook is wildly popular, the service stands a chance of turning your Facebook identity into an uber-identity for the web. Others have tried this, yet none has gained broad enough acceptance to become a de facto standard.

” … You can see the appeal of it. You’re at a site requiring you to sign up for an account. But there’s another option: You can just sign in with your Facebook identity. Unless you’re vigilant about your privacy, you’ll probably opt for the easy way out.”

It was the last four words that struck me. I think the majority of Internet users opt for the easy way out. Not the most secure, not the most technically elegant, not the safest … just the easiest.

All we need is for a few large online sites like Amazon.com or Google to join the 24 web companies that have already announced support for Facebook Connect and voila! Critical mass on both consumer and vendor sides of the equation could trigger mass adoption. The first really successful Identity Provider could be born.

Technorati Tags: Identity, Digital Identity, Identity Management, Identity Provider, AOL, Facebook

The OpenSSO Project has released an Early Access Build — OpenSSO Express Build 5.

With the release of this build, community members now have the opportunity to actively participate in the Early Access (EA) program for Sun’s next commercial offering.

You can review the Early Access documentation and put Express Build 5 through its paces. See what works and what doesn’t. Please submit your feedback to opensso.eafeedback@dev.java.net so the commercial product will have benefit of your experience and expertise.

This is an outstanding example of how innovation and quality can be accelerated through synergistic cooperation of a large community.

Thanks for your participation.

Technorati Tags: OpenSSO, Identity, IdentityManagement, DigitalIdentity, Federation, Open Source