Sun’s CTO Greg Papadopoulos calls for acceleration in the widespread adoption of strong authentication to thwart identity theft.
He proposes the combination of using a mobile phone as a physical security token, coupled with a “Check-That-Its-Me” registration authority (Trusted Third Party).
Tags: Identity
Digital Identity
Identity Management
Sun Microsystems
GregPapadopoulos
Strong Authentication
Identity Theft
My friends at MG Solutions,
a Sun Identity Management Partner, sent me this clever Christmas card.
When Santa Claus is considering Identity Management, you know it’s going mainstream!
Tags: Identity
Digital Identity
Identity Management
Christmas
MG Solutions
My colleague Sean O’Neil, aka Identity
Crisis, posted some provocative
comments about the power and danger of Identity Management.
Tags: Identity Digital
Identity Identity
Management Sean
O’Neil
Location:
"a position or site occupied or available for occupancy or marked by
some distinguishing feature"
I
find location as an Identity attribute to be a fascinating subject. I first
wrote about location as an Identity attribute in one of my first blog
entries.
We just got a Christmas card from my wife’s sister and her husband featuring a
photo of themselves standing on the Great Wall of China.
At the point in time
when that photo was taken, it is fair to say that the locations attributes of
Diane’s and Gaylen’s respective Identities were different that when they were
back home in Salt Lake City. Each individual in the world possesses a location
attribute (perhaps expressed in longitude, latitude and elevation) at any point
in time.
Physical location is usually described relative to a fixed position. My home
address is usually expressed relative to the nation in which I live, but can
be expressed relative to the earth if I add nation to my address.
If you would like to conduct an addressing experiment, please send postcard
to me, addressed only to "Mark, 85204-4623 USA." If the zip code system
works, the postcard should come directly to my house. All the other addressing
information is theoretically superfluous.
When I fly on an airplane, my address (seat number) is relative to that particular
airplane. When I attend a baseball game, my address (seat number) is relative
to the stadium where the game is played.
Logical locations (e.g. email address, website addresses, cell phone number)
are not attached to physical locations. While I exist physically in Arizona
(at the point in time while I’m writing this blog), a logical representation
of my Identity can exist elsewhere. The physical location is not necessarily
important. I was on a conference call today with six other people. The logical
address (conference bridge) was relevant; the physical location of the participants
was not.
Location based services, such as 911
service for cell phones, are based on the premise that the location of a person
at any point in time is important. Of course, 911 service for home telephone
service is much easier to implement, because home telephone users are tethered
to a specific location by a piece of wire. However, when technology can link
a logical address (telephone number) to a physical location (longitude/latitude),
all sorts of interesting applications emerge.
Tags: Identity
Digital Identity
Identity Management
Identity Map
Location Based Services
Role: "A
function or position. A character or part played by a performer."
In
his song Man
at the Top, Bruce Springstein quotes the old nursery rhyme, "Rich
man, poor man, beggar man, thief. Doctor, lawyer, Indian chief." We often
describe people by the roles they play. Indeed, every individual is a multi-role
performer on the stage of life.
People inherit some roles (e.g. father, daughter, citizen), while some are
consciously sought (e.g. student, president, or Man
at the Top). Others may be forced upon a person (e.g. theft victim, celebrity).
At any one time, a person can be acting in multiple roles (e.g. father, husband,
employee, mayor). Much has been written about a person’s role
balance (how an individual can address or cope with complementary or conflicting
roles).
Role
balance has also been used to describe team performance. In managing teams
of people, I like to seek work toward Synergistic Creativity, where
a team with complementary roles can create much more than the sum of each team
member’s individual creativity. I recently learned that Patrick
R. Dugan of Ohio State University claims to have coined that term.
Roles usually imply relationships
(e.g. The role of Father implies a relationship with a child; the role of citizen
implies a relationship with a political entity). Even an independent role (e.g.
human being) has implied relationships (e.g. each human has a mother). Some
roles are identified primarily by former relationships (e.g. ex-con, ex-wife,
former president)
A few examples of roles are categorized below:
Individual
Family
Professional
Community
Commerce
Occupation
Education
Organization
Sports
Interpersonal
A "role model"
is a person in whom another person places trust or attempts to imitate. Charles
Barkley is often quoted as saying, "I am not a role model. . . parents
should be role models."
In the world of Digital Identity, linking roles with access privileges enables
Role Based Access Control (RBAC). I’ll
comment on RBAC in a separate blog entry.
One more thing – as you read this, you are experiencing the role of "blog
reader." I have enjoyed my role as "blog writer." Good day!
Tags: Identity
Digital Identity
Identity Management
Identity Map
Role
RBAC
Bruce Springstein
Relationship:
"The condition or fact of being related; connection or association."
Some
time ago, I posted an entry
on the importance of relationships in the Identity Management field. It first
occured to me during the Burton Group Catalyst conference earlier this year
that relationships are an important part of Identity. The more I think about
the subject, perhaps relationships are the most important part. The reason we
use Identities at all is to facilitate interaction between people or between
people and institutions.
Relationships can be formal (e.g. Jack legally owns a house, Jill is an employee
of IBM) vs. informal (Jack and Jill are best friends). Relationship can be intimate
(husband and wife), or remote (Jim and Bob are distant cousins, but haven’t
met each other). Relationships can be postive (Harry and Bess have a strong
working relationship) or negative (Gus divorced Sally).
I have categorized Identity relationships into four groups: Person to Person
(P2P), Person to Institution (P2I), Person to Thing (P2T) and Person to Concept
(P2C). A few examples follow:
P2P – Person to Person
Family
- Parent/child (I am a parent of six children)
- Sibling (I am sibling to two brothers and four sisters)
- Marriage (I am married to the best wife in the whole world)
Other
- Friend (Phil Barney is a good friend)
- Neighbor (the Cox family lives next door)
- Rival (Larry Bird and Magic Johnson were basketball rivals)
- Enemy (Mr. Hatfield and Mr. McCoy were bitter enemies)
- Student/teacher (Mr. Ross was my English teacher)
P2I – Person to Institution
Employment
- Employer/employee (I am an employee of Sun Microsystems)
- Manager/employee (Joe is my boss)
- Employer/contractor (I am a former contractor to the Brown & Bain
law firm)- Co-worker (I work closely with Bill)
Business
- Consumer – vendor (I am a frequent customer at Fry’s Grocery)
- Reader – news source (I read the East Valley Tribune)
- Participant – online community (I participate in the OpenSolaris online
community)- Partnership (Trent and I are partners in a business deal)
Memberships
- Church member (I belong to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints)
- Organizations member (I am a member of the Arizona Technology Council)
- Alumni member (I am a graduate of Brigham Young University)
- Political party (I am a somewhat disgruntled member of the Republican
Party)- Citizenship (I am a citizen of the United States of American)
P2T – Person to Thing
Ownership
- I own our home
- I own a Treo
- I don’t own a cat
Possession
- I possess a laptop computer owned by Sun
- I possess a copy of a library book
Proximity
- I am sitting on my chair
- I am close to my computer
- I live a long way from Mongolia
P2C – Person to Concept
Ideas
- I understand digital arithmetic
- I don’t understand quantum physics
- I am studying the Mongolian language
Value system
- I believe in revealed religion
- I love freedom
- I admire integrity
- I abhore dishonesty
Intellectual property
- I created a plan
- I invented a process
- I own a copyright
In addition to these categories, Opinions are frequently
used to describe the relationship between a person and another entity:
- I enjoy Chinese food
- I dislike ranch dressing
- I like country music
- I favor limited federal government
- I love my wife and kids
- I respect my employer
- I loathe frivolous lawsuits
I’m sure there are many other ways to describe relationships, but it has been
an interesting experience thinking through this process. And just think – my
relationship to you is at least blog creator to blog reader. 🙂
Tags: Identity
Digital Identity
Identity Management
Identity Map
What a way to boost one’s self esteem!
Tags: Identity
Digital Identity
Identity Management
Frank & Ernest
Identity Theft
Hopefully, Identity Theft doesn’t have eternal consequences!
Source: Readers Digest, September 2005, p.226.
Reputation:
"recognition by other people of some characteristic or ability"
A long time ago, I heard a wise man say, "Reputation is what men carve
on your tombstone; character is what angels declare before God."
This little article is only about reputation – what others may figuratively
carve on your tombstone. You may wish to review my recent blog entry where I
shared some of my thoughts about integrity,
an essential component of character.
Reputation is not what one claims about himself; it is what other people say.
Reputation may be informal (Jack is an honest man or a horse thief) or formal
(Jack is a registered CPA or a licensed barber). Reputation may be based on
truth (valid college degree) or fraud (forged passport). Identity theft may
be seen as one person’s attempt to establish a ficticious reputation, while
often destroying the reputation of another.
We commonly attempt to quantify reputation:
Other reputation characteristics are more qualitative:
Our society loves to recogize reputation by granting special awards:
Credentials are formal evidence of reputation – not reputation itself, but
a means of claiming reputation for ones self:
In the digital realm reputation is often established through trusted
third parties (e.g. government institutions, Sxip
home site). An individual may make a claim or assertion; that claim may
need to be validated by another person or institution.
In closing, may I recommend an interesting little article
that speaks of a "trusted personal brand, or reputation." The author
recommends that we consciously seek to enhance our personal reputations: "If
there’s a gap between where you are and where you’d like to be with
your brand image, you can close the gap."
Tags: Identity Digital
Identity Identity
Management Identity
Map
Name:
"a word or phrase that constitutes the distinctive designation of a
person or thing"
My
Dad taught my 7th grade math class. For some odd reason, I remember an exercise
outlined in his instructor’s book to teach about symbolic representation: A
student was to come forward and write his name on the chalkboard. What is the
name on the chalkboard? Is it the same as the student? No, the name is just
a symbol that represents the student. If the name is written twice, do we get
two students? No. When the name is erased, does the student cease to exist?
We hope not!
So, what kind of names are given to individuals?
Each time one of our children was born, we filled out a form specifying the
child’s name, including:
This act of assigning the name for a child’s birth certificate establishes
the official "distinctive designation" for the child. To change this
official name requires a legal process.
"Unofficial names" come naturally, or may be assigned or assumed
during the course of one’s life:
Titles are modifiers to names:
Honorary names
Other names include special codes, numbers or names assigned for convenience
in interacting with a person:
So, what is a name? A symbol? Yes. But it often represents much more. Every
name has a story. My surname represents a legacy of courageous pioneers who
braved unbelievable odds to migrate across the great plains to establish an
honorable existence in the hostile mountains of the West. My first name is the
same as my great grandfather, whose dad wasn’t quite a pioneer because he came
west by rail. My middle initial is a compromise between a mother who wished
to give me a middle name and a father who didn’t like middle names! My initials,
MGD, were
mine before Miller Brewing misappropriated them!
Tags: Identity
Digital Identity
Identity Management
Identity Map