Dear friends, I am doing my dissertation researching user-centric digital identity management systems and I would like to ask for help. I really need filled up questionnaires to finish my analysis. This research is aimed to investigate the development of User-Centric and Single Sign-On (SSO) identification technology with the aim of reviewing the chain of technological development in IDM systems in whole. The research objectives are to investigate main factors that define user-centric identity management system, understand main functions of that systems and possibilities of usage in public and private systems. Plus here is recommendation from my supervisor.

I know that your time is limited and I have to respect it. There are just 36 questions and it could take 10 minutes.

My Survey - http://egov.identity.sgizmo.com

Thanks in advance

Albert Poghosyan

Personal Identity Provider from VeriSign Labs has been updated with new design and better functionality. It is partially proved that VeriSign is really interested in OpenID development.

A variety of authentication and identification systems has been developed during the evolution of Information Technologies and Interactive Communication. But undoubted prerogative of most developments and innovations has been done by VeriSign Incorporation (www.verisign.com), which is no doubt the world leader of intelligence and security provider. In case one is up to write the history of the Internet and Information technologies, the best reference will be the History of VeriSign Inc, as any of its steps is a step towards the Internet development. Starting from 1995 when they started to sell SSL Certificates they have had the great purposeful behaviour to establish high security level and trust in the Network. And they definitely succeeded. Only a year later they opened the Digital ID centre - big developments in the security providing and huge achievements in Network solutions. In 2004 VeriSign introduced Unified Authentication system. In 2006 Personal Identity Provider project has already been released where a new technology is being used: OpenID. To be honest, I need to mention that the project is still free, but, potentially, it could be commercialised later. David Recordon who is in charge of the development of this technology while working on other projects is still working on this one which is a real prove that OpenID is going to be more and more  developed in the next few years.

Albert Poghosyan

The issues of identity management and authorization have been established from very old times whenever somebody decided to protect his property from foreign aggressors. That’s how it was in cities of old Europe - if they were protected with high walls they checked everybody who entered the city to determine who could harm their security from inside. On the market days it was a very big queue because everyone must be checked on the entrance. But after invention of trebuchet which was very effective to destroy the city walls they have to change the security strategy along with identity management strategy and that’s why trading in Middle Ages has started to develop very fast (Windley 2005). Though it is a very interesting example of identity management, there were more interesting cases, such as caliph’s harems which was a more intimate place. Even though the access to caliph’s harem was strictly bounded there where people who could access it. They were eunuchs who were castrated because of some reasons of security.

So if we look on the first example we will understand that traditional exclusionary security model – perimeter-based systems focused on keeping bad people out of the system – are not sufficient to protect the virtual systems (Lewis 2005), just because you are keeping out not only the bad but also all the others. But even we understand that long time ago by changing security strategy but from another point we can’t castrate all users just because they are going to use our system. Even though, now we are allowing users to access our private and intimate information, todays systems must create exclusionary security with an exclusionary access to applications and data that support core processes. And such exclusionary models are unattainable without Identity management.

Basically everything starts from the act of authentication. Authentication is the act of establishing or confirming something (or someone) as authentic, that is that claims made by or about the thing are true (Wikipedia 2006). Authenticating a person may mean to identify that the person is who he/she says he/she is. In case of organizations they can present their Trust Certificate, but in case of a person - it is just impossible without special technologies. However, in many cases authentication is the most important stage of Interaction. For a long time authentication procedures in the area of service provision was, of course, paper-based (even now some companies request scanned copy of passport by email). And probably the best examples of self identification were passport or driving licence. Meanwhile, with the arrival of digital technologies to our society, enabling the development of online services, it became clear that new forms of authentication are required for situations in which the digital user’s identity must be checked as part of an assessment of service entitlement. In last decade lots of complicated systems have been developed aiming to solve this issue. But let’s go a little deeper into evolution of these systems.

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