Identity management requirements- Sadek Ferdous

In the article A comparative analysis of identity management systems, Md. Sadek Ferdous introduced the taxonomy of identity management requirements and explained all these requirements in a concise and accurate way, which helps me a lot to understand the technology aspect of identity management systems and I would like to use these requirements as my project’s evaluation elements.

To better understand what the IDM requirements are and how to achieve them, I compared my generated concepts of my project to all the requirements from Sadek’s article. In this way, I’m able to figure out the IDM needs I’m recently focusing on and needs I should add to consider. Though there are some requirements I may not solve in this project, I would like to keep them in mind during the whole process.

The laws of identity-Kim Cameron, Microsoft

Recently I read the article of The laws of identity. This article helps me a lot to understand the technical knowledge and limitation in terms of dealing with identity system issues.

Here is some finding I consider very useful for my project:

• Relationship

“Enterprises see their relationship with customers and employees as key assets, and are fiercely protective of them.” Relationship between customers and online service providers is an important concept I need to pay attention in my project. Because enterprises regards it as key assets therefore it’s hard to ask them to share relationships and collaborate with other services. And from the user’s point of view, creating a new account means they choose to build a new relationship with other services and the later account maintain or abandon shows the change and how people deal with this kind of relationship.

• User control

User control is regarded as one of the most key requirements of identity by the author.

• Metasystem

Unifying identity metasystem is also an important concept in this article. The author said “we need a way to surface information through a unified user experience that allows individuals and organizations to select appropriate identity providers and features as they go about their daily activities.” This kind of selection of appropriate identity elements is what I’m interested in my project.

• Consistent experience across contexts

This is one of the seven laws of identity and this part is one of the most useful parts I get from the article because it relates a lot to my project, which discusses a lot of how to help people better manage their online identities across different online platforms. The author said “The unifying identity metasystem must guarantee its users a simple, consistent experience while enabling separation of contexts through multiple operators and technologies.” And in this part the author offered six contextual identity choices as example (Browsing, personal, community, professional, credit card, citizen), which could be used as categories in the new service I would like to create in this project. The author also mentioned very meaningful advice that we need to “make digital identities into “things” the user can see on the desktop, add and delete, select and share”, and that corresponds my goal to transfer intangible online identities into tangible to let the users see their online identities in a holistic way.

myIDkey – a fingerprint secure voice-activated USB drive

myIDkey is one “fingerprint secure voice-activated USB drive” and also  one “complete password management system” which combines USB driver, personal computers and smart devices. It looks a good choice to manage our huge amount passwords created for different organization requirements and security protection needs. The idea of using a system but not one single token or online plaffrom to manage our digital identities is quite useful for my IMPRINTS project.

More gestures, less touches- two brilliant technology is coming soon

First is Leap Motion:

“Raise your hands and wave hello to the future.” This fantastic gesture controller- Leap Motion Controller will begin shipping to consumers on May 13. It “senses your individual hand and finger movements so you can interact directly with your computer. ”

Another brilliant one is MYO:

“Using groundbreaking technology, MYO is able to measure electrical activity in your muscles instantly. The result is a seamless way to interact with computers, and a truly magical sense of control.”

These two gesture technologies both focus on gesture control but in different approaches. The other similarity is that they are both coming soon. They have launched the pre-order for customers, which means gesture control is getting close to our real daily life. Seamless interaction with devices is one big need from users, and maybe in the future gesture identity verification will be a new choice of identity management.

Digital Service Design: Lessons from the Cloud- Continuum

Digital Service Design: Lessons from the Cloud is an article published on Touchpoint from Continnum. It discusses the balance between digital and non-digital aspect of service design. Consistent experience delivery is emphasised in this article and it “involves a translation of your business’s core essence to each touchpoint”. The author says “Service Design ‘in the cloud’ is not about slapping on a Facebook page or about merely digitizing information” but about “balancing design craft, organisational innovation, systems management, and new digital technologies in the entire context of Service Design, while keeping the human connection in mind.” This is very useful for my project to remind me to keep user-centered design in mind and keep myself from lost in technology elements.

EyeVerify – secure your smartphone with your eyes

(Picture and more information from Theverge)

EyeVerify is a new program which applies eye vein biometrics to help users get access to a phone or application. It basically scan user’s eye veins to identify the person through camera on the phone. This technology is said safer than face unlock of Android, “more accurate than facial recognition” and “makes its way into devices at some point in the future then it could be a convenient way to secure a device or a smartphone application”.

OK Glass- liberate our hands

OK Glass is the watchworld to launch Google Glass. After that, lots of amazing things like record videos, send images or search picture resources could be executed.

Above is the video of user experience display with Google Glass which just uploaded today. Even though from the comments we could see many people are worrying and questioning the privacy security issues, I think it’s a good start for Google anyway. The very cool part for Google Glass is that it explores many new ways to interact with smart devices when your hands are free, and in the same time it leads to much more direct interaction with our life. Most functions of it really benefit and rich our life. The interfaces and operation ways of it are also pretty simple, clear and user-friendly.

And at last I really appreciate the translate function it offers, I must need it as 24/7 service 🙂

 

New approach to information security

Why the traditional approach to information security is no longer working is a very recent article from Network Security.  It mentions that security vendors should guild IT managers in choosing best authentication management strategy not only meet diversity user needs but also benefit organizations in terms of cost, effectiveness and reliability. This relates to context-based authentication (CBA). And also the author points out the need to manage all “access points” is one of the best way of IDM, which is a good response to the recent trending of more devices (here is a post about it). At the end of this article, the author analyze the advantages of cloud authentication. Cloud-based authentication benefits organisations very well: reduced costs, more scalability, easier deployment and more effective management of authentication solutions in a heterogeneous user and device environment. This is a very useful technology support information of my Master project. It’s important to start from user needs, but also I think it’s important to know about the technology context to help me link user needs to realization opportunities.