Commentary by Mark Wahl, CISA
Organizing principles for identity systems:
Burton Group Catalyst: John Fontana on the multivendor user-centric identity demonstration (20070630)
John Fontana of Network World has written an extensive article summarizing his interviews with participants and visitors at the Burton Group Catalyst conference "User-Centric Identity Interoperability Demonstration".
- "Multivendor identity systems can work together, demo shows", page 1
"The demo's intent was to show that emerging user-centric identity systems ... can be federated and act as a universal identity mechanism for access to Web-based resources....But while the lofty goal of user-centric identity is still in the distance, Wednesday's demonstration showed that it is obtainable."
- "Multivendor identity systems can work together, demo shows", page 2
"Independent developers Chuck Mortimore and Ian Brown were in the back of the room showing off their OpenInfoCard and Safari InfoCard browser plug-ins, respectively, in what they jokingly termed the "hippy section.""
- "Multivendor identity systems can work together, demo shows", page 3
"But [Gerry Gebel of the Burton Group] and others caution the technology still presents many questions, including appropriate use for high-value and low-value transactions based on dollar values or privacy concerns, commonality of the identity selector among the user interfaces, and formatting of identity data."
- "Multivendor identity systems can work together, demo shows", page 4
""One problem we had when developing LDAP was that when you extended the schema with a new attribute, you had to go to each vendor and have them put in the new schema," said [Mark] Wahl. He said that model did not scale. "We want to make it easier to extend the identity schema, easier to make changes and add attributes and that will take a common metadata model.""