Identity management on converged networks: a reality check

ABSTRACT

Since the early days of the Web, identity management has been a big issue. As the famous cartoon from the New Yorker reminds us, "on the internet, nobody knows you are a dog". This was true back in July 1993. This is true today. For the last few years, numerous initiatives have emerged to tackle this issue: Microsoft Passport, Liberty Alliance, 3GPP GUP, Shibboleth, to name a few. Major investments are being made in this area and this is foreseen as a multi-billion dollar market. Yet, as of this writing, there is still no widespread identity management infrastructure in place ready to be used by the general public on converged networks.The goal of this panel is to do a reality check and try to answer the following five questions:

• What is identity management?
• Who needs identity management and why?
• What will the identity management ecosystem look like?
• What's agreed upon?
• What's next?

INDEX TERMS

Primary Classification:
  H. Information Systems
  H.3 INFORMATION STORAGE AND RETRIEVAL
      H.3.5 On-line Information Services

Additional Classification:
  H. Information Systems
  H.1 MODELS AND PRINCIPLES
      H.1.1 Systems and Information Theory
  H.3 INFORMATION STORAGE AND RETRIEVAL
      H.3.4 Systems and Software
          Subjects: Distributed systems; Information networks

General Terms:
Design, Management