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Today, users are required to login into each and every website independently, using a separate username and password for each. Fewer repetitive interactions on the Internet are as frustrating or as redundant. The reason for the current state of affairs is that until recently, there existed no notion of a single, standardized identity mechanism capable of spanning across multiple websites. This is true both for inter-organizational interactions as well as for individuals. An Internet identity is the concept that unlike today, an individual will be allowed to maintain a single identity on the Internet, inherently more secure and with built-in features designed to give control, privacy and added security to the individual.
Organizations, like individuals, are today limited in their ability to extend security, authorization and provisioning of employee identities to applications and resources maintained beyond their firewalls. Outsourcing, partnering, off shoring and the use of on-demand software is driving the need for a solution which does not differ for each interaction. Federated Identity Management delivers Internet identity for organizations. It provides a single, standards-based, secure method of managing user identity between organizations. Federated identity delivers improved security and reduced operating costs while giving users the convenience of single sign-on to applications anywhere on the Internet.
Today, a separate user account must be created, maintained and authenticated to each website one visits. In the future this will change. Individuals will have a new option. This option will allow them to create a separate identity, hosted by an independent 3rd party (or themselves), and use this new account (identity) throughout the Internet.
OpenID is a new decentralized protocol for enabling Internet-scale identity for individuals backed by a robust open source movement. Use of an OpenID gives every user a unique identifier, or handle, which can be used to identify the user when they arrive at a website and wish to register or login. Use of this identifier, which takes the form of a URL (e.g. http://andre.signon.com) provides both the user and the website being accessed a mechanism for identifying where on the Internet the user maintains their personal information, and where authentication should be performed.
Information Cards is the generic term given to the protocols that enable 'card-based user-centric identity'. Windows CardSpace is the trademarked name of the Microsoft client that ships with Vista, and is the equivalent of the 'browser' to the Information Cards identity paradigm. Information Cards enables the user to visualize the identity information that is being passed between an identity provider and a relying party, and allows the individual to control what information is passed between the two. Microsoft promotes the use of CardSpace as an easy-to-use Strong Authentication mechanism that is far more secure than traditional usernames and passwords. In fact, during Bill Gates? keynote at RSA 2007, he spoke about how CardSpace can eliminate phishing vulnerabilities in OpenID.
Many B2B interactions require explicit trust in highly secure environments. SAML was designed to accommodate these use-cases specifically, whereas OpenID was designed to accommodate B2C interactions, where explicit security was less of a concern to user convenience. In some use-cases OpenID and SAML overlap, but for the most part, they solve different problems.
SignOn.com is a managed service designed to give individuals better control, security and privacy over their identity on the Internet.
How we manage our personal identity for use on the Internet is broken, and the situation is getting worse. More services are digital and automated, more crooks are trying to get at your stuff, and fraud is increasing the stakes. It is harder and harder to secure things online and manage your ID. The Internet Infrastructure was not built to support the identity management needs of individual people. Hence Internet scale Identity is needed.
With the industry focus on strong authentication, OpenID and CardSpace, it's getting complicated. There is growing demand for independent 3rd parties to help us all manage our identity, as well as our pseudonimity on the Internet. SignOn.com leverages the latest in identity and authentication technologies to provide a secure, personal service to end-users, which gives them control over their identity.
Individuals who wish to better protect their identity on the Internet and companies that are providing services who deal with individuals trying to manage their own Internet identities.
When we entered the market five years ago, organizations told us they needed software to help them control, protect and secure the identity information they shared with partners over the Internet. This has come to be called Identity Federation, and today we're a major provider of federation software.
Now individuals are discovering that they have the same needs and problem, namely, how to control, secure and keep private their identity when used on the Internet. It's only natural that we leverage our learning and technology to deliver a service that helps individuals.
It takes one minute to set up a SignOn.com OpenID account. Once created, you can use your new SignOn.com account at any Open ID enabled website, And, if you have Windows CardSpace already installed, it takes only a few additional minutes to set up with your SignOn.com account to used CardSpace for secure authentication.
When it's ready for prime time. We do not yet have a set date.
A place where Ping Identity experiments with new technologies and business models.
We have been delivering Internet identity products for businesses and organizations with PingFederate. Now with SignOn.com, we are providing the same security, privacy and control to individuals. However, the delivery method the different (hosted service versus software) given the nature of the consumer market.
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