Communications of the ACM
White House Calls For Internet Identity Ecosystem to Protect Online Users
The Obama administration has announced a plan to establish an Internet identity ecosystem that will lower the incidence of fraud and identity theft while making online transactions simpler. The guidelines for the National Strategy for Trusted Identities in Cyberspace are currently being drafted by administration officials, and U.S. Commerce secretary Gary Locke says the guidelines will be issued in the next several months. He says the purpose of the ecosystem is to improve online security and privacy via trusted digital identities.
White House cybersecurity coordinator Howard Schmidt says the system will focus on four central buckets. The ecosystem must first be strictly voluntary, and it will only work if consumers are confident and trust that the information is safe. Interoperability is the third bucket that the system will be oriented around, ensuring that users' credentials will be accepted all of the time. Rather than depending on fixed passwords that people either reuse across multiple sites or have weak passwords at the outset, Schmidt wants to see a number of anti-fraud mechanisms in operation. The ecosystem's fourth critical property is affordability and ease of use.
From eWeek
View Full Article
Abstracts Copyright © 2011 Information Inc., Bethesda, Maryland, USA 
Comments
Cassidy Alan
Beware of Godzilla offering to protect you from the wolves....
Displaying 1 comment