identity

On the Internet, nobody except perhaps Google Profiles knows that you're a dog.

For those who want to endow their self-description with an extra layer of authenticity--helping put doubts, for instance, over whether their Profiles page may have been created by a scuzzy ex-boyfriend to rest--Google has carried over a feature from its Knol sites that let people verify that they are who they say they are. People who go through the process--Google executive David Glazer is one--get a green "verified name" tag on their profiles.

The name verification procedure comes from Google's Knol site, … Read more

The government is taking steps to protect consumers by reducing its use of Social Security numbers, yet with identity theft complaints numbering in the millions, counties across the country are still making the numbers available in bulk or online to businesses and the public.

The President's Identity Theft Task Force released a report (PDF) Tuesday marking the progress of federal agencies in combating identity theft. Steps taken include better assisting identity theft victims and increasing prosecutions and other deterrent measures--federal identity theft convictions increased 26 percent from 2006 to 2007, according to the report.

Many steps have also been … Read more

Life may have just become a wee bit harder for Novell. Novell has been an open-source competitor for years in the Linux market, but it's less clear how Novell will react to open-source competitors to its proprietary products.

In the Linux server market, Novell knows how to fight fire with fire, with IDC suggesting that Novell's SUSE has been making market-share gains at Red Hat's expense. Red Hat still dominates the market with more than 60 percent of global market share, but Novell has an increasingly viable response to Red Hat's dominance.

It's less clear, … Read more

WASHINGTON--The federal government is trying to find better ways to standardize and coordinate personal information about American citizens that is currently spread across thousands of databases, according to a White House official.

There are more than 3,000 programs or databases in the federal government that hold personal information--Social Security numbers, addresses, fingerprints, and so on--yet the government is only beginning to develop a plan for collecting, protecting, and using such information.

"You have a lot of duplication of data" among various agencies, said Duane Blackburn, a policy analyst in the White House's Office of Science and Technology Policy. … Read more

WASHINGTON--Is the idea of widespread biometric data collection still too spooky to win over the American public?

At some level, it's already becoming commonplace: California and some other states demand fingerprints from driver's license holders. The Verified Identity Pass program includes iris scans, as does the U.K's border control system. And prisoners have their blood forcibly drawn for a DNA sample.

But more widespread use of biometrics, especially by the government, raises substantial privacy concerns that may alarm many Americans and prove difficult to resolve, panelists at a conference here said Tuesday.

"How would I … Read more

CA on Tuesday announced it acquired identity management company IDFocus.

With the acquisition, CA plans to use IDFocus' Ace identity management technology to provide employees with multiple authorizations in their company's employee resource planning (ERP) system to automatically have those authorizations checked against the information they are seeking or the task they're trying to conduct.

Specifically, the CA Identity Manager aims to give employees various authorizations, then run a check against the segregation of duties (SOD) policies set up in the IDFocus software. If a policy has been violated, the CA Identity Manager is designed to kick in … Read more

As the federal government makes efforts to protect citizens online, it is encouraging people to look out for themselves as well.

To kick off its fifth annual "National Cyber Security Month," the National Cyber Security Alliance, an organization of government, academic, and industry representatives, paired with Symantec to release the results of a national poll on Thursday showing Americans do not feel very safe online, yet they believe they are more protected than they actually are.

Just 26 percent of respondents said they felt their computers were "very safe" from viruses, and 21 percent felt their … Read more

A bunch of us were debating over Twitter yesterday whether it's desirable to have separate personal and professional identities on the service. The consensus seemed to be: "it depends." It depends on your professional situation. It depends on how personal and workplace-safe you want your posts. And so forth.

I find this whole question of what I call "identity 2.0" fascinating. Increasingly, there's a blurring line between personal and professional identities--and even between multiple compartments within those buckets.

As Wendell comments in a post: "It's kinda like living in a small … Read more

Around four years ago, I got a call from some of the original founders of a small network identity and authentication company that eventually evolved to become Identity Engines. In simple terms, the company built an enterprise-class Radius server that greatly enhanced the intersection between networking, identity, and security.

From my first meeting with two or three people, ID Engines raised a few rounds of financing, hired some really smart folks, and developed a product. The company also was able to ride the momentum of an IEEE protocol named 802.1x for authentication. Geeky? Yes, but 802.1x is slowly … Read more