Speaking as part of the virtual ISSE Conference, panelists discussed the concept of whether “real digital identity” can exist. Chaired by Heather Flanagan, principle at Spherical Cow Consulting, the panel proposed ways in which digital identities can exist, and what is required to make them work.
Pamela Dingle, director of identity standards at Microsoft, said businesses need to encourage sharing and collaboration in order to help employees get their job done, but two issues tend to stand in the way: friction and fraud. “We are told to not allow crime to occur and to make users successful, so how do we be successful and collaborate without causing chaos and devastating action?”
Dingle said that we are in a situation where fraud “is so brutal” that users are pushed into a position of friction, and “you cannot resist friction if you’re pulled into fraud.” She argued organizations can choose to give up everything and try new things, or try new things you’re not doing today and embrace where automation help you.
Kim Cameron, CIO of Convergence Technology, suggested the idea of a global identity concept, where the user owns their own identity and other “realms” connect into that. “Realms are not identity systems, but authentication systems,” he said.
“So my way of thinking on how to solve the problem is for a mechanism for people to have their own identity and realms should recognize them, and you don’t need to give them keys,” Cameron said.
“It should work to any realm, but not be a super cookie. It should allow services to recognize you, not correlate you.”
As for who provides this digital identity, Cameron said this “wallet” doesn’t contain any personally identifiable information, and is managed by your identity service provider, as the wallet manages your universal identity. “The idea is the wallet can live on mobile device and also live in cloud.”
Calling this “something optimistic and within our reach,” he said the common issue is that businesses mix new concepts with “old technology stacks” and that doesn’t solve the problems.