The new Identity Equation

A few days ago, I tweeted about this CNET article that talks about the plans that Twitter has to expand their search service into what could be one of the most powerful real-time search engines anywhere. The key to this whole thing is the idea of reputation – that ephemeral quality that will improve the

Welcome to the new Talking Identity

I know I’ve been quiet for a while. In large part, I lay the blame at the doorstep of the almighty Twitter. It made it too easy for me to get my thoughts out there without having to put too much effort into it 🙂 But it is partly also because I have been working

Are Social Networks the biggest threat to User Privacy?

Privacy advocates have long been raising a hue and cry about the negative impact social networking sites are having on privacy. For the most part, the glare has been on the poor security practices and privacy controls of these sites. But now researchers at the University of Texas at Austin have brought to light a

More Things about Federated Provisioning

My previous post on federated provisioning generated some interesting responses, both in the comments and in the blogosphere (see responses from Ian, Pamela and Pat Patterson). The topic has been so engaging (starting with Jackson Shaw’s post) that while I was writing this post I saw that Dave Kearns has made it the topic for

The Thing about Federated Provisioning

Ian Glazer recently blogged about federated provisioning, saying “Federated provisioning should not exist; there is only provisioning.”. Well, I think he’s both right and wrong about this. Let me explain. Suppose two companies, Acme and Omega enter into a federation agreement, whereby employees of Acme will be able to access a service at Omega using

International Data Privacy Day: Real Problems, Real Solutions

Wednesday, January 28 is International Data Privacy Day, honoring the anniversary of the Council of Europe Convention on Data Protection (No. 108), the most important international law for privacy. The purpose of this convention is to secure in the territory of each Party for every individual, whatever his nationality or residence, respect for his rights

On Anonymity, Pseudonymity and Personas

One of the online forums I participate in is commonly referred to as the Identity Gang (it is now part of identity commons). An interesting conversation took place last week on the topic of anonymity and privacy. The conversation did branch out a bit (as these conversations often do), but it did bring to the

Change We Need

It’s been a long time since I have been able to post. A lot conspired to make it difficult for me to keep up with my blogging, not the least of which has been a number of interesting, but under wrap, developments within the IdM group at Oracle (if you follow me on Twitter, you

Evolving the Identity Services architecture

The last 3 months or so has been really good to my work defining our vision for Identity Services. I’ve gotten valuable input from my colleagues in the IdM business, and my participation in Project Fusion and Burton’s Identity Services Working Group has helped crystallize some key aspects of the architecture. Below is the latest

The changing face of Password Management

A college student was arraigned on Wednesday for allegedly breaking into Gov. Sarah Palin’s private e-mail account last month. Political leanings aside, I  read the news article with great interest for the inherent security implications. Reading it, this line jumped out at me: The F.B.I. said that the younger Mr. Kernell allegedly hacked into the