 Identity ManagementNetwork World's Identity Management Newsletter, 06/25/07Identity management initiatives hit EuropeBy Dave KearnsMy friend Marcus Lasance, a senior consultant with Siemens and formerly with MaXware, had promised to send me a report on another European identity conference (see this issue from late May with details about a conference held in Munich), the 20th annual EEMA conference in Paris. (EEMA is the European Association for e-Identity and Security, formerly the European Electronic Messaging Association.) Here’s what Lasance had to say: “The conference was attended by 130 delegates from across Europe and one or two from Japan, USA and Russia. This year’s conference was co-organised and hosted by the ENISA, the European Network and Information Security Agency, which is a new agency of the European Union. The ENISA tracks were centred mainly around e-Authentication Interoperability, while the EEMA tracks covered the more traditional Identity Management topics like Federated Identity and Provisioning. With Kim Cameron as one of the keynote speakers the topics of user centric Identity Management and Privacy of course got plenty of attention, as did Microsoft’s valiant effort to start practicing what Kim preaches with their CardSpace implementation. “Alain Esterle of ENISA pointed to a number of initiatives with the aim of arriving at pan-European Identity interoperability. The Manchester Ministerial Declaration [an eGovernment initiative] has of course proposed ambitious objectives to be reached by 2010 for the EU and this deadline is approaching uncomfortably fast! David Goodman, chairman of EEMA (now with Apertio), who can always be relied on to put forward some thought provoking ideas, told us that what is happening in the area of social networking with regards to Identity Management is happening pretty much spontaneously and without any direction! At least 19 billion young users are engaged through sites like MySpace and Facebook. Their identities would never even appear in any global X.500 directory and are not yet on the radar of credit card companies. Sites like SecondLife remind us that in the future an avatar might become the most personal expression of our digital identities. David reminded the audience that our challenge is to ensure that our personal identity data is used effectively and appropriately by everyone and anything that goes anywhere near it.
“Olivier Delos of SEALED gave a good example of how e-ID cards issued by governments can be used to facilitate electronic transactions in the private sector. However ‘anti’ the privacy lobby may make us want to feel against such applications, the presented use case of a Belgian Water Company clearly showed what savings can be made when users are allowed to use their Belgium Citizen ID card as an identity service provider. One hundred and fifty thousand address change notifications are now processed this way in a matter of seconds, with zero manual input, zero errors and a user satisfaction rating of 10 out of 10. Unfortunately this type of example where businesses are allowed to benefit from an infrastructure provided by government remain rare and citizen to government transactions requiring an e-Identity to be presented amount to only 1.7 transactions per year according to one study. Hardly what you would call a ‘killer application’. So the barrier to acceptance remains a big concern about privacy, even tough according to Kim Cameron the technology is designed to enable the relying party to remain hidden from the Identity provider when privacy is a concern. Before ‘Joe Public’ readily accepts this is the case, a lot of water will flow under the bridge unfortunately.” There was much more that went on, and we may get to some of it in future issues, but Lasance did want to point out that the ISSE (Information Security Solutions Europe) will be coming up in Warsaw at the end of September. And, I’ll add, that Catalyst Europe will be in Barcelona a month later.
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| Contact the author: Dave Kearns is a writer and consultant in Silicon Valley. He's written a number of books including the (sadly) now out of print "Peter Norton's Complete Guide to Networks." His musings can be found at Virtual Quill. Kearns is the author of two Network World Newsletters: Windows Networking Strategies, and Identity Management. Comments about these newsletters should be sent to him at these respective addresses: windows@vquill.com, identity@vquill.com . Kearns provides content services to network vendors: books, manuals, white papers, lectures and seminars, marketing, technical marketing and support documents. Virtual Quill provides "words to sell by..." Find out more by e-mail. ARCHIVEArchive of the Identity Management Newsletter. BONUS FEATUREIT PRODUCT RESEARCH AT YOUR FINGERTIPS Get detailed information on thousands of products, conduct side-by-side comparisons and read product test and review results with Network World’s IT Buyer’s Guides. Find the best solution faster than ever with over 100 distinct categories across the security, storage, management, wireless, infrastructure and convergence markets. Click here for details. PRINT SUBSCRIPTIONS AVAILABLE International subscribers, click here. SUBSCRIPTION SERVICESTo subscribe or unsubscribe to any Network World newsletter, change your e-mail address or contact us, click here. This message was sent to: security.world@gmail.com. Please use this address when modifying your subscription. Advertising information: Write to Associate Publisher Online Susan Cardoza Network World, Inc., 118 Turnpike Road, Southborough, MA 01772 Copyright Network World, Inc., 2007 |
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