Fedsphere Feeds| Influential

DON CIO's Collaborative Website Goes Live

Sun, 14 Feb 2010 22:00:00 -0700

The Department of the Navy Chief Information Officer has launched the Pulse, a restricted-access collaborative website for members of the DON information management and information technology community. DON personnel who join the Pulse have the opportunity to shape current and future IM/IT initiatives.

Has the Use of E-Mail Peaked?

Sat, 28 Nov 2009 22:00:00 -0700

Historically, each generation expands the use of the communication inventions from the previous generation. Communication has evolved from cave drawings and carvings, to smoke signals and music (such as drumbeats, chants and yodeling); to written inscriptions; to letters distributed by foot, horseback, ships and railroad. Morse code revolutionized communication through the telegraph and line-of-sight light flashes.

Web 2.0: Federal CIO Council Releases Guidelines for Secure Use of Social Media

Mon, 16 Nov 2009 22:00:00 -0700

The use of social media has become a popular topic within the Department of the Navy, Defense Department and across the federal government. As agencies begin to venture into this media, whether it is creating an agency Facebook page or updating constituents via Twitter, precautions must be taken and risks should be assessed. While these tools open up many avenues for broader communication and collaboration, they also come with threats to network security.

Navy Command Social Media Handbook

Wed, 13 Oct 2010 22:00:00 -0600

The Navy Command Social Media Handbook was developed by the Chief of Information's (CHINFO) Emerging Media Integration Team and is intended to provide the information needed to more safely and effectively use social media.

Internet-Based Capabilities Guidance: Official Internet Posts

Wed, 18 Aug 2010 22:00:00 -0600

This ALNAV provides guidance to all Department of the Navy personnel regarding official posts on Internet-based capabilities. A separate ALNAV provides guidance regarding unofficial posts on Internet-based capabilities.

Internet-Based Capabilities Guidance: Unofficial Internet Posts

Wed, 18 Aug 2010 22:00:00 -0600

This ALNAV provides guidance to all Department of the Navy personnel regarding unofficial posts on the Internet, including those pertaining to DON-related content and discussions. It also provides guidance about best practices for use of Internet-based capabilities (IBC) in a personal capacity. A separate ALNAV provides guidance for external official presences on IBC on behalf of the DON.

Web 2.0 – Join the Discussion in the Pulse

Sun, 16 May 2010 22:00:00 -0600

In February, the Department of the Navy Chief Information Officer (DON CIO) launched the Pulse, a collaborative Web site for members of the DON information management/information technology (IM/IT) community. With its launch, DON personnel have the opportunity to shape the direction of the organization.

Collaboration Tools for the Federal Government

Tue, 09 Mar 2010 22:00:00 -0700

During the past few months, collaborative media has become a topic of interest and debate in both the Department of Defense and Federal Government. As a result of this interest, collaborative sites restricted to myriad combinations of defense, intelligence and Federal Government communities have begun to see a rise in participation. Some of them, such as Intelink, are sponsored by government agencies and limited to a select subset of the Federal Government, while others, like GovLoop, aim to connect employees at the federal, state and local levels. Below is a selected overview of a few of these tools.

4 Ways To Find Real Enterprise Security Threats

Mon, 14 May 2012 11:19:00 -0600

Companies re-prioritizing their defensive security efforts need to look beyond vulnerabilities. Here's advice on how to find the real threats to your business before they find you.

The government needs a portal-of-portals portal

Sat, 12 Mar 2011 20:04:32 -0700

Creation of new federal web sites under the Obama administration has reached warp speed. So much so that even the main federal portal, usa.gov, can’t keep up with them. For the most part, the new sites are of interest mainly to the hordes of interest groups that already keep tabs on this or that agency.

Two sites in the news recently got me to thinking. When it comes to one branch of federal online service, I would like to make the case for a single portal. If you go to USA.gov, within a couple of clicks you get to all of the consumer guides and protective links. There are 101 of them.

Last week, the Federal Trade Commission came out with its annual report on the complaints it received. Its collection site, Consumer Sentinel, logged more than 1.3 million complaints year about financial products and services.

Also last week, the Consumer Product Safety Commission proceeded with somewhat controversial plans for an online system for consumers to send in complaints about products under the CPSC’s jurisdiction, Safer Products.org. Commission chairwoman Inez Tannenbaum told me and Amy on The Federal Drive that she has sufficient staff to filter out complaints that will inevitably come in that don’t come under CPSP. She said they’ll redirect those posts to the agencies that to have sway.

Not that the CPSC didn’t anticipate this problem. The drop-down menu of product categories ensures that people don’t report something wrong with, say, chicken. Another drop-down tells consumers what is outside CPSC, with links to those agencies.

The president and the Government Accountability Office have recently pointed out that the multiplicity of agencies each having something to say about food safety is another area ripe for reform and consolidation.

It all gave me an idea. How about one big site called “Tell The Government” or “Federal Complaint Central.” It would have these characteristics:

Simple online form with field for the product name, what it is generically, who the manufacturer is, name and type of store from which it was purchased, zip code, and a text field for the specific problem.
A software analysis engine that, knowing what agencies oversee what, and backed by a database of retailers and manufacturers, could quickly sort and forward to the appropriate agency. It would be able to spot and block instances of repeat complaints or postings with identical wording coming from various URLs.
The complaints would be forwarded to the manufacturer and retailer so they could investigate (as the CPSC does).

No longer would consumers have to wade through 101 or more web sites just to figure out where to complain. It would be up to each agency to decide how to handle the complaint according to its standard procedures.

Windows 8 Lets Parents Track Kids' Internet Use

Tue, 15 May 2012 08:50:00 -0600

Microsoft's Windows 8 Family Safety tool generates reports that keep parents informed about their children's online activities.

InformationWeek's RSS Feed is brought to you by

Tue, 15 May 2012 08:50:00 -0600

Half Of Computer Users Admit To Pirating Software

Tue, 15 May 2012 06:48:00 -0600

Software pirates typically are young and male and live in emerging economies, where obtaining legal copies of software isn't always easy, finds Business Software Alliance study.

Creating Visibility for You & Your Company

Tue, 19 Jul 2011 09:45:00 -0600

We have all read articles written by people who may not be the most qualified experts, and we certainly have all seen speakers who would be better off taking copious notes from the audience rather than dispensing advice from the podium. There are even some business book authors out there who have one or more books out that really offer little value, yet they seem to find an audience.

How did they get the speaking gig, article assignment or book deal, and how do they develop an audience?

Each of them has defined a niche and studied it at least enough to get the attention of a trade magazine or book editor or a conference director. Then they have designed a way to get on the radar, to generate some attention.

Becoming visible to your business community, your niche, is not an easy or quick process. It can be simple, but it is not easy, but we all need the attention only our niche can provide if we are to survive and thrive in these tough times. It does not matter if you have a small, medium or large company (although some will argue it is easier for large companies to get PR), or even if you are a solo-preneur like me - each of us needs enough attention to generate new business, to find the right job, to get the book deal or to move to the next level.

There are many tools available, and more becoming available every day, but the process of selecting and deploying the right tools for your niche. There are hundreds of web 2.0 tools out there, but let's just look at one for right now: LinkedIn.

LinkedIn has well over 100 million register business professionals, 990,634 groups (as of 11:22 AM EST, 7/19/ 11), many useful apps to use with your profile, and a ton of ways to help you stand out in a crowd and connect with key epople throughout your market.

But how many people on LinkedIn are really using it to stand out in their respective niches? My estimate is less than 2%. But key decision makers are using LinkedIn to identify the "experts" in various fields, and these include people who hire speakers, give writing assignments, and offer book deals.

So what does it take to truly stand out?

Knowing your subject well is always job #1.

Defining your area of expertise in terms that will resonate with your niche is job #2.

Getting the word out is job #3.

I use LinkedIn as the "hub" for my web activity. When I write an article, I post the link for it in pertienet groups on LinkedIn. The result this week is one of the most read and most emailed articles at www.WashingtonTechnology.com . It makes the editor happy to have fresh traffic coming into the site, it keeps my name active in the market niche, and it could generate some business. I write an article for Washington Technology's web site once a month, and each time my promotional activity helps make it a well-read article. And it doesn't take me long to do this.

I will also "tweet' the article link, which will put it on all the social networks I use and maybe generate some re-tweets as well.

How are you leveraging the available tools to generate some targeted viisibility in your niche for you and your company?

If you need some fresh ideas on how to stand out in a crowded market, drop me a line - markamtower@gmail.com

Best of luck with your efforts!

Mark

I’m being tracked by the government!

Wed, 02 Mar 2011 14:59:25 -0700

Well, not personally. But my home broadband connection is being monitored by the FCC. Not to worry, I volunteered for this.

Nearly a year ago I read an FCC press release about the agency wanting to monitor a sampling of broadband subscribers across the nation to get a detailed idea of how well service measured up to provider promises. On a lark, I signed up.

My house is like an archeological tel of internet access. The old dial-up line is still snaked along a baseboard to a socket near where one of the main computers sits. The original Dell 486 has been replaced by successive Macs, but old disks, even a floppy or two, still inhabit shelves. We’ve had two successive DSL providers over the years, before signing up last fall for Verizon FIOS.

Anyhow, months went by after I sent my information to the FCC. Then I was contacted by an outfit called SamKnows. That’s the FCC’s contractor for this project. (Isn’t that funny? Uncle Sam asking SamKnows for help.) They told me I’d made it through initial screening. Another information request, another couple of months, and now I was a finalist. I think there was another round of online information requested before the FCC informed me, via SamKnows, that I’d been chosen as a sampling site. Woooweee!

A month after that, a brand new NetGear 802.11n wireless router arrived via UPS. I didn’t quite get around to installing it immediately. But SamKnows kept noodging me with reminder e-mails. Last night I finally installed it.

SamKnows provided excellent instructions. It knew all about my Verizon-provided router. Unlike most commodity units, it has a coaxial cable input. So it was necessary to daisy chain the FCC-provided router to the Verizon router with a Cat-5 cable. The wired stage configured itself. But I had to log onto the Verizon router (SamKnows mysteriously knew its URL) to disable the wireless stage. All of the WiFi devices in the house — four notebook computers, two iPhones and an iPad — had to be remapped to the Netzero.

All in all, everything went perfectly. A couple of hours later, I received a confirmation email from SamKnows, reassuring me it had detected what they call the white-box router.

My wife wanted to know, what else is that thing monitoring? And how long would we have it sitting there on her desk?

I hope and presume SamKnows knows only my FIOS performance. Earlier communications from SamKnows had directed me to a broadband test site. That test indicated I am getting the upload and download speeds Verizon promises. Whether my (boring) web viewing habits or e-mails are being sniffed and sent to FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski, I have no idea. Nor do I know how long they’ll be watching.

It occurs to me that in my broadcast life on Federal News Radio in Washington, I am subject to monitoring by the FCC. So I’d say Genachowski owes me a beer.

Who says customer service is impersonal?

Sun, 27 Feb 2011 11:26:35 -0700

Maybe it’s the lousy economy. Maybe it’s because automation in call-center, inbound situations is finally making a real difference. Or maybe it’s because the connectedness of the social media world has such an artificial feel to it. But I’m feeling an upturn in human contact — enabled by, but not because of, electronic communication.

Three recent examples:

Gum. I’ve chewed gum all my life. I know it’s not a lovely habit, but, like tattoos (I’ve got one of those, too) it’s become mainstream. In the past few years, the gum-making industry has put forth a burst of innovation in both gum flavors and packaging. We no longer live in our grandfather’s world of five-stick packs of Beeman’s or Juicy Fruit. So on a lark, I sent an e-mail to the Wrigley division that makes the sugarless Extra brand of gum. I wanted to tell them how much I like their mint chocolate chip flavor. Plus it has Sorbitol, which my dentist approves of. Within an hour I got a personally composed reply from Tosha M., a consumer care representative. No freebies, but they were glad I liked their gum.

Blackberry. Hoo, boy. A total of nine hours on the phone with three level 2 tech support reps. One call lasted through dinner. I put the phone on speaker, so when the tech put me on hold to read log files I’d zipped and e-mailed, we had dinner music. There is a subtle, intractable, and horrible flaw in the complex of software required to do a simple task–sync my Blackberry with my Mac. Lack of sync is one problem. That something, some bit of code somewhere actually causes the USB ports on the Mac to die, forcing a power-switch reboot, now that’s really an issue. One rep was in Canada, one in Texas, the third in Nova Scotia. The case tracking and history technology Research in Motion really works. And when you’re on the phone with a stranger for three hours, he or she becomes not such a stranger. We exchanged family stories. I accompanied a musical show on the piano over the weekend. J.C. at Blackberry sings in his church choir. We complained about the Dallas Cowboys. The Nova Scotia rep, in hour nine, had a shrewd insight. He had me install Blackberry Desktop on my wife’s Mac. Worked perfectly.

Uh oh. This is a “your hardware problem,” isn’t it, I asked tentatively. ‘fraid so, came the answer. Bummer. Luckily I have a nearby Mac dealer that’s not an annoying Apple Store with annoying “geniuses.” They can fix anything Macish.

Carrying cases. I have several electronic keyboards. I’m partial to Korg and Kurzweil. (I’m in the market for a used Farfisa.) I am buying nice, uniform cases for them. Handles, metal corners, foam lining. I found a place in New York that keeps a database on the exact dimensions of hundreds of instruments and other pieces of equipment. Even Sousaphones, which I don’t play. But they make each case on demand. Tom answers the phone and it’s like we’re old friends. One case ships without the wheels. One call and the wheels kit comes the next day — with a deduction off my bill for the wheels option because I have to install them myself. That requires an electric drill.

Three industries, and customer service with a personal touch is alive and well.

The Waldo Factor - part 1

Tue, 30 Aug 2011 12:22:00 -0600

Here’s the scene, and I think we’ve all been here: You are at a conference and the person on stage speaking to 1,000+ people is somewhere between adequate and pretty good, but you are thinking he/she is not as good as you. My usual thought is along the lines of “where did they dig up this clown, and why is he/she talking about last year’s hot ideas as if they were new?”

So why is that person on the stage and you are sitting, frustrated, in the audience? What got them up there and not you?

While there are no easy answers to that question, the biggest factor is they are better known for what they do than you are. It may be because they wrote a book or some articles, they had some other speaking engagements, they were recommended by someone advising the event, or maybe they “knew somebody” or probably some combination of these and other factors. Somehow they were able to get in front of the right people at the right time and get the speaking engagement.

Regardless of the factors that created the situation, the fact is they are on the stage and you are in the audience. People are looking at and listening to them, and you are one of those faceless people in the crowd. Again, we've all been there.

Think of the person on the stage as Point B, and you as Point A. How do you get from Point A to Point B?

In the book series Where's Waldo, a tall guy with glasses dressed in blue pants, a red and white striped shirt and matching hat is always somewhere in a scene so crowded with other things and other people that it is hard to find him. The reader’s (really, viewer, as there are no words) job is to find Waldo.

In the speaking scenario above, the only one easy to find is the person on the stage. Unless you are wearing a red and white striped shirt with a matching hat, you will be hard to pick out in that audience. That's not usually the way you want to stand out in a business crowd.

Your job is to intellectually stand out and stand apart in your business niche, and to be easily found by those who need to find you because of your expertise. Then the people you want to meet and know will have an interest in knowing you and having as part of their online and offline network.

Growth in any market niche is predicated on building relationships with key influencers in that niche, and then becoming an influencer in that niche. Those influencers can include prospects, partners, press, investors, C-level execs and others influential in your market.

To build the relationships and maximize your presence, you need to develop credibility in your market, then build your visibility. Visibility without credibility has no value or worse, negative value.

Credibility is developed by being good at what you do and working at getting better, being among the best at what you do, and adding value to the community. Then you find ways to share some of your knowledge and opinions with others.

Once you start this process, you are already creating visibility, but it is necessary to continue to build your knowledge base as you expand your visibility. Markets evolve and you must evolve with them to retain your credibility.

Traditionally we have face-to-face events for networking, seminars and conferences where we share or receive knowledge, publications where we read, write or be quoted. These are still excellent venues.

But wait!!! There's more!

With the advent of web 2.0 tools, we have the ability to either bypass traditional methods or enhance them by incorporating them into our web-based activity.

For business professionals, LinkedIn has become an incredibly valuable tool for developing credibility and visibility. Your ability to stand out in a crowd is now predicated on your ability use both the traditional and web-based tools and coordinate the activity between them to make you among the most “findable" experts in your niche. Think of it as "findability".

So here is the initial equation:

credibility + visibility = findability.

There are several examples and one great example is Steve Ressler, founder of GovLoop.

Steve was a government IT analyst and program manager at the Department of Homeland Security. While working for the government, on his own time he co-founded Young Government Leaders, which has become a great networking venue for the next generation of public managers.

Then in 2008, Steve started the online community for Feds, GovLoop (by for and about Feds - the Facebook for government).

Steve's use of social media, which also led to being featured in traditional media, is a great example of what can happen if you develop an expertise and share your ideas. Along the way he won acclaim and awards from industry groups and trade publications, leading to even more visibility.

Steve stays active through GovLoop, Young Government Leaders and mainly by sharing ideas in as many forums as possible.

None of this happened overnight for Steve, and it all required hard work.

We don't all need industry-wide visbility, but most of us need visibility within a defined niche. And the tactics to gain that visibility are basically the same:

1- be good at what you do and work hard at staying good;

2- find the venues where those in your niche congregate, both online and offline venues, and get involved;

3- participation in these venues involves helping with events, working in special interest groups, developing and sharing ideas, commenting on other ideas, etc;

4- always be on the lookout for ways to share with others who would be interested.

Credibility, visibility and findability are truly keys to success.

IF you need assistance in developing and implementing a plan to raise your findability, send an email to markamtower@gmail.com .

Our Winchester House – and Digital Platforms of the Future

Thu, 15 Jul 2010 14:33:16 -0600

I was first introduced to the Winchester Mystery House in 2003 when I met Steven Spewak (one of the Enterprise Architecture discipline’s founding fathers) at a conference in Washington DC. Steven used the Winchester House as a great metaphor to illustrate what happens if we do not plan our business and IT-systems. And it is a great picture! It is hard to understand why we time and again build our business models and supporting infrastructures with no blueprint, no rigour, and no understanding of the problems that we might be passing on to the next generation when we build virtual Winchester houses.

We recently bought a house in Copenhagen. It is a small house build in 1935 located very close to the beautiful Amager Beach. We love the location and we love the house. BUT, modernizing the house has been strenuous! The house itself is solid. The problem is all the home ‘improvement’ projects that the previous owner added to the house with no master building plan. Most of the ‘improvements’ were home-made, worst-of-breed solutions that we had to remove and rebuild from scratch. After six months of modernizing, the house is now like we want it. But, is it human nature to build Winchester houses without a plan…?

My experience is that most people think that they plan ahead. The problem is that they often do not know their future (business) needs and demands. And therefore they only build for the short term…

Digital Winchester Houses
Like our small Winchester House in Copenhagen, the information systems of many large organizations and corporations are under perpetual construction — growing, changing, duplicating, multiplying. Creating a master building plan – for a house or information systems architecture – has a tendency to get very complicated and technically focused. Therefore, many organizations have a tendency not to plan for the development of their digital platforms.

The problem seems to be that, on the one hand, we create Winchester Houses when we do not have a master building plan. On the other hand, we have a tendency to create complicated architectural frameworks and methods that are not linked to implementation.

Thus, as suggested in my research, I think that our IT plans must provide a comprehensive and coherent view across business, information, and technology. That is, not just to guide the design of single IT systems – but to deliver business change supported and enabled by well planned digital platforms. In my practical work, our national IT planning take advantage of the Danish Reference Models. With “just enough” structure in these models to understand business, it-services and technology, we can build more complete and consistent IT-architectures that result in greater reuse, process standardization, and shared digital platforms for innovation.

Strategic IT planning – and enterprise architecture in general – must be understood as a meta-discipline that embraces, supplements, and extends other disciplines such as IT-Governance, Portfolio Management, Business Process Management, and Information Management.

Government enterprise architecture programs should be adopted in alignment with these other disciplines, address shifting business needs in partnerships, and then use “just enough” architectural content and demanding timetables to drive changes in the way IT performs.

I wish people would build houses – and digital platforms – like that in the future…

Blogging Break for the New Dr. Chief Architect

Sun, 02 Aug 2009 04:38:59 -0600

This spring, I successfully defended my PhD dissertation and was promoted to Chef Architect in The Digital Taskforce in the Danish Ministry of Finance.
Two large projects this fall in the Ministry of Finance will require a blogging break for me. But, I will be back – and I will continue to update my list of publication and links on this website in general.
Ciao to you all… See you here again soon )

Three Emerging Challenges for Community Managers – #e2conf

Fri, 04 May 2012 11:21:06 -0600

We are in the midst of a big shake out in how organizations use social technologies. As we develop a common understanding of the opportunities and risks, better decisions are being made about when and how to use the technology available. We are no longer having exciting breakthroughs every day, so the changes in the market have become more subtle, but no less profound. There are three big challenges I see as we move forward:

1. First, many organizations have enthusiastically embraced and rolled out social technology, but didn’t really think to include staffing and content resources with the initial roll out. They have let 1,000 flowers bloom – or die – on their own. While this approach can be very effective in that it allows rapid experimentation and organizations can really discover what works best for them, it also comes with some pretty high risks. If the stage is not well set for productive use of the technology by community managers, people may not use the tools in ways that have clear and uncontroversial value – and there may be no one to track it even if they do. Successful experiments won’t be shared to other groups. Dead groups that project a failed community won’t be cleaned up. Executives who come in to take a peek my see chaos – or nothing – which is not helpful to garnering their support and extending the value of community to the entire organization.

2. Another big challenge faces community management teams in organizations that are further along in their community lifecycle. These teams, in many cases, are being squeezed and asked to address near impossible tasks like reconciling the culture of the organization across geographies and functions in order to engage in a consistent way. Part of the reason is that executive sponsors don’t really understand what they are implicitly asking of these teams and don’t adequately understand some of the growing risks in the online social world.

3. Finally, as social business initiatives grow so does the gap in experience. There are a fair number of people who have been managing communities in the online world for more than a decade, but often in contexts that don’t fit the growing need. Culturally and from a business perspective, online gaming and banking are very different worlds. Companies looking for community management are going to have to be flexible about who they hire for community management roles and plan to invest in training and other professional development resources for these individuals. There are lots of people who are poised to fill community manager roles well, but very often don’t have the experience to prove it is something they can do.

The good news? Understanding the need for community management is on the rise. Training and other professional development services are available – including those we offer at The Community Roundtable. Finally, budgets for social business initiatives are growing. All of this will help address these challenges. Join us at the Enterprise 2.0 Conference as experts in the field share their experience on the community management journey.

See you there!

Rachel

The Architecture track at the Enterprise 2.0 Conference – #e2conf

Fri, 20 Apr 2012 11:04:33 -0600

As organizations work to transition collaboration and social pilots to enterprise-wide initiatives, architectural questions increasingly rise to the fore:

How can we integrate with other systems?
How do we incorporate enterprise directory structures?
How can we ensure performance and reliability at scale?
How can we convert features to applications?
How can we put social applications within the flow of everyday activities?
How much does SharePoint — present and future — really address these issues?
How solid are all the many other vendors?
And so on…

The architecture track at the Enterprise 2.0 Conference this June was designed to answer these questions. I hope you can join us there.

I’ll kick off the track with a pre-conference workshop, “Insider’s Guide to Evaluating Architectures and Selecting Vendors.” As a customer, you have more choices than ever, in terms of architectures, delivery and license models, functional breadth, and integration alternatives; this session will help you sort it all out.

For the conference itself, Kashyap Kompella leads off with “Social as a Layer, Not a Place: Are We There Yet?” This session critically assesses a emerging architectures that posit social and collaboration services as a layer (rather than a place) to apply over diverse workstreams within the enterprise.

As many enteprise collaboration leaders will testify, “SharePoint happens.” But do you have to accept that platform as-is? Join three leading SharePoint gurus — Jill Hannemann, Richard Harbidge, and Sadie Van Buren — for “SharePoint: Optimizing 2010 / Looking Forward to 2013.” We’ll turn next to the customer perspective with “Social Collaboration at Scale: Customer Panel.”

Finally, industry luminary Mike Gotta will analyze key building blocks in “Design Considerations For Enterprise Social Networks: Identity, Graphs, Streams & Social Objects.”

If you have any questions or comments, just ping me here.

See you in June!

Tony Byrne

Sales and Marketing Track at Enterprise 2.0 Boston – #e2conf

Wed, 11 Apr 2012 16:51:10 -0600

Social technologies are changing the ways we market and sell, that’s obvious. But the change is not simply superficial or new ways to do the same old work. Social — along with analytics and mobile technologies — is enabling companies to be far more knowledgeable about who they target, what messages they deliver, and even what products and messages they develop. In short, social companies have the ability to do business better than their non-social rivals.

But what does that mean?

Check out our track at Enterprise 2.0 in Boston on June 19^th. It will showcase some advanced thinking about social adoption, revenue development and how companies are adopting social approaches.

Our goal for the track has been to identify and bring to our audience real thought leadership from some of the industry’s leading practitioners in a variety of disciplines.

Gerry Murray, Research Manager, and Joe Ferrantino , Research Analyst, both from IDC will share some of their findings from very recent social research.
Phil Fernandez, CEO of Marketo, will discuss how modern socially based marketing technologies affect revenue generation.
Steve Adams, CEO VirtuOz will talk about how virtual agents will take on some tasks to improve eCommerce and eServices.
Jarek Sygitowicz, CEO, Smartupz will discuss how to make the most of social graph analysis.

We are also planning a special panel discussion to round out the Sales and Marketing track.

So make the Sales and Marketing track a focus of your time at Enterprise 2.0. You are coming aren’t you?

Upcoming #E2conf Webcast – The Management 2.0 Challenge: How will YOU Reinvent Management in Your Organization

Tue, 10 Apr 2012 12:58:10 -0600

The management model in most organizations is out of step with our times. The model of the past is a hierarchical structure, with a bureaucracy that runs on conformity, control, standardization, and specialization. It was designed for large organizations to be efficient at scale, not to address the ways humans work best.

Come to this session armed with your questions. You’ll be able to submit questions directly to our panelists for a live Q&A session during the hour.

Date: Wednesday, April 18, 2012
Time: 10:00 AM (PST) / 1:00 PM (EST)
Duration: 60 minutes

Presenters:

Gary Hamel
Gary Hamel has identified the practices and ideas that are reinventing leading corporations in this new model, inspired and enabled by social technology. The Wall Street Journal has ranked Professor Hamel (London Business School) as the world’s most influential business thinker. Fortune has called him “the world’s leading expert on business strategy.” He is co-founder of the Management Innovation eXchange and a best-selling author

Paige Finkelman
As General Manager of the Enterprise 2.0 Conference and the BrainYard.com, Paige is responsible for business strategy, brand direction, and content programs. Her experience includes roles in business development, product management, event production and sales. Paige holds a Law degree from the University of Manchester in England.

Milind Pansare
Milind Pansare is senior director for Social and Collaboration software at Saba. He has over 25 years of experience in Silicon Valley, and has led product marketing, product management, partner programs and large engineering teams at silicon valley startups and larger silicon valley companies like Sun Microsystems and HP. He has also served as an advisor to startups at a prominent silicon valley startup incubator. He holds a degree in Computer Science.

Register Now for this free Webcast

Today’s social media technologies offer an alternative. It is now possible for organizations to be:

Large but not bureaucratic
Focused but not myopic
Specialized but not balkanized
Efficient but not inflexible
Disciplined but not disempowering
Fit for the future and for human beings

From a practical standpoint, organizations use the Internet’s DNA—its values of transparency, collaboration, meritocracy, and self-determination—to fundamentally transform management. Join the conversation as Gary Hamel shares insights in this free, interactive webcast on April 18.

You’ll walk away with the principles and tools of the Web that will make your company more adaptive, innovative, inspiring—and fit to embrace the opportunities of a fast-approaching future. After the event, you will receive a webcast report and regular updates on the best new ideas in management innovation from the Management Innovation eXchange.

A Human Capital Management Track Preview

Wed, 04 Apr 2012 16:22:13 -0600

We’ve got an intriguing Human Capital Management track lined up for the June Boston E2.0 Conference in a business area which is starting to see enormous change after years as a bureaucratic people processing departmental silo.

Like many other industry verticals the Human Resources world is being exposed to the connecting forces of enterprise 2.0 thinking and technologies: internal social networking enabling collaboration between everyone in a company, their suppliers and associates and even customers in some consumer industries. Agile Software as a Service updates iterations, the mobile revolution and of course a rapidly changing, increasingly digital sophisticated workforce.Historically HR Technology has been very impersonal, with a focus on the processing of people in and out of companies, with annual performance reviews which are divorced from key moments in employees work lives, their triumphs and frustrations.

A whole new generation of people centric technologies have now arrived, with some having a direct impact on the limitations of existing Human Capital Management suites. On-demand financial management and human capital management software vendor Workday have had an enormous direct impact on the HR world, and ownership and interactions with systems of record are an important key to enabling broader collaboration across enterprises.

Our working worlds are now changing rapidly and the old guard of people processing technologies are starting to react, with acquisitions of 2.0 challengers and attempts at socially networked interoperability across companies. Oracle have bought Taleo, SAP Successfactors and Salesforce Rypple in the last few months, and the changing face of Human Capital Management is really starting to pick up stream as greater flexibility and cross pollination with other parts of the enterprise jigsaw is expected by end users.

I’ve had Rypple (now part of Saleforce) speak at the last two Enterprise 2.0 conferences, with their client Facebook providing fascinating insights into the ways they work together at the fall Santa Clara event.

As I said in the 2010 Enterprise 2.0 Conference White paper ‘HR Management Challenges & Opportunities‘ Recruiting, compensation & payroll, benefits, incentives and training/learning are the lifeblood of managing the people in a modern company but those foundational elements are table stakes in the new social enterprise vision.

Ideas which have been discussed at past conferences are now being demanded today by some enterprise customers and our sessions are sure to be forward looking from a practitioner’s perspective.

Session details include:

- How Target Corporation are driving large scale E2.0 adoption driven in part by theiryear-long “Be Connected” adoption strategy

- Innovation versus Integration, a panel discussion between agile innovators and seasoned global enterprise players on how they see your future

- A discussion of how Lowes are using collaborative technologies to move beyond traditional forms of employee messaging to new strategies designed to build employee meaning and engagement

- An exploration of how Enterprise 2.0 and Social Networking’s Influence on Human Resource needs has influenced the development of a new generation of better software and mobile support

It’s sure to be another fascinating event and I’m looking forward to seeing both familiar and new faces and to listening and participating in the conversation.

Oliver Marks

The Anatomy of a Social Era Business

Mon, 02 Apr 2012 14:03:10 -0600

Much of the chatter out there around Enterprise 2.0 and Social Business revolves around the growth and application of social tools, and, why not? After all, these technologies have often been the catalysts for the charge forward.

Right now much of the discussion sounds like:

“We need to get our employees using these tools so ‘we know what we know’ as an enterprise.” Or, something along the lines of “We’ve got to get more people to follow us and like us.”

Those conversations may be starting points but they’re certainly not the ending points if our organizations truly want advantage. If we are to move towards collaborative, connected enterprises that drive value, the questions we need to start asking ourselves are much more about – “What are the implications of Social Business to the way we work, the way we lead, and the way we organize as a business?” And, “How does this shift our operating model and the ways we drive value as a company?”

To be clear, social, to this point, has been applied tactically heads and shoulders above strategically – and it continues, in nearly every organization, to be an overlay to their current operations – this is a recipe for a superficial dish, at best.

We have seen the trees for some time but the forest is just starting to become clear. New roles are emerging. New ways of leading and managing must accompany that. And, the need for reimagining the ways we engage and empower our customers and workforces (made up of a complex web of employees, contractors, agencies, partners, and freelancers) are bearing down on us.

I’m pleased to be leading a new track at Enterprise 2.0 starting this June on the topic of ‘Organizational and Operational Readiness’ that will continue to dive deep into these very topics. Of course, there is no silver bullet and no one has “the answer” but I don’t believe you’ll find a better place than this conference to connect with some of the early front-runners who are making their forays into asking these questions and taking action in their enterprises.

In our track, you’ll hear from and engage with leaders from Bank of America, Telus, The Hartford, SUPERVALU, and more in addition to learning from our work with numerous other F250 companies. It aims to be a very engaging track where presenters and participants alike will share what’s worked, what hasn’t and how we can overcome barriers and leverage bright spots to drive our organizations forward. In the spirit of social and collaboration, we even have one session where the entire presentation will be entirely crowd-sourced on demand from the audience.

Take a peek at the agenda and know that this will continue to evolve for this June and ongoing. We hope to see you there and have you be a part of this vital conversation >> http://www.e2conf.com/boston/conference/organization-and-operational-readiness.php

Warm regards,

Sara Roberts, Author, Speaker, and CEO of Roberts Golden (www.robertsgolden.com & @robertsgolden)

What’s Next for Enterprise 2.0 Conference in 2012?

Thu, 05 Jan 2012 16:41:49 -0700

With a new year comes new beginnings, and as 2012 gets underway, I want to give an update on how Enterprise 2.0 is shaking things up this year.

Evolved Positioning

I’m excited about the direction this brand is headed. Enterprise 2.0 has been a key driver in pushing social forward, creating a forum for buyers and sellers to connect and explore the power of social and collaboration in business. Once considered a “rogue” market, social is now mainstream. As 2012 gets underway, social will not only dramatically change the way we do business, but can also inform the business due to an abundance of new data – data that can be mined to improve internal business processes and create operational efficiencies in customer and partner networks.

Mobile will play an even more important role in the enterprise this year, and reflecting on this trend, we announced Mobile Connect which will run alongside Enterprise 2.0 in Boston this year. Like social, mobile will fundamentally change the way we do business. Mobile and social are enabling new inputs, fueling vast amounts of data, and creating an opportunity for businesses to run more effectively than ever before. The tools that provide a deep, meaningful analysis of big data will be as integral to the success of these initiatives as the technologies themselves.

We are experiencing a renaissance in enterprise social software. Disruptive forces including social, mobile and better analytics are all influencing enterprise apps, reshaping them from a user’s perspective. Enterprise 2.0 events and online portfolio will continue to be at the forefront of the renaissance playing out. E2’s diligent reminder and question for 2012 attendees is:

The technology is here – is your enterprise ready?

E2 will be the place for enterprises to step back and rethink what the influences of mobile and social mean for their business, and to find out what’s next in enterprise apps. Enterprise 2.0 will continue to bring together key IT and business leaders tasked with making decisions about the future of their organization’s enterprise applications – expect E2 to continue to serve up relevant content and provide real context for attendees.

New 2012 Advisory Board

To help E2 evolve its new positioning, we’re bringing in the big guns to help us get there. Along with some of the usual suspects from previous years, we’ve added a few new folks to the Advisory Board. Say hello to our 2012 members:

	Nathan Bricklin SVP and Head of Social Strategy Wells Fargo Wholesale Banking
	Lee Bryant MD Europe Dachis Group
	Tony Byrne President The Real Story Group
	David Carr Editor The BrainYard
	Ross Fubini Advisor Kapor Capital
	Adam Graff Senior Manager, Collaboration Services Genentech
	Josh Greenbaum Principal Enterprise Applications Consulting
	Rachel Happe Principal and Co-Founder The Community Roundtable
	Irwin Lazar Vice President, Communications Research Nemertes Research
	Maribel Lopez Principal Analyst and VP, Constellation Research; Founder, Lopez Research LLC
	Oliver Marks Partner, Sovos Group and blogger ZDNet Collaboration 2.0
	Ross Mayfield Chairman and Co-founder of Socialtext; VP Biz Dev, SlideShare
	Andrew McAfee Principal Research Scientist, Center for Digital Business MIT Sloan School of Management
	Sameer Patel Partner, Sovos Group
	Sara M. Roberts Book Author and President & CEO Roberts Golden Consulting
	Andy Wang Principal Systems Architect Genentech
	Steve Wylie General Manager UBM TechWeb

New 2012 Vendor Board

E2 can learn a lot from our partners. Although we are an independent conference, ultimately every vendor in this space is encountering the same challenges and opportunities, and to create an opportunity for the conference to learn from our sponsors, for the first time in the event’s history, Enterprise 2.0 has created a Vendor Advisory Board. These folks will serve as a litmus test for ideas and weigh in on positioning. Please meet the 2012 Vendor Board:

	Lawrence Coburn CEO and Co-founder DoubleDutch
	Mike Gotta Senior Technical Solution Marketing Manager for Enterprise Social Software Cisco
	Nikhil Govindaraj VP, Products Moxie Software
	Aaron Levie Co-founder & Chief Executive Officer Box
	Andy MacMillan VP of WebCenter Product Management Oracle
	Nathan Rawlins VP of Product Marketing Jive Software
	Walton Smith Senior Associate Booz Allen Hamilton
	Jared Spataro Sr. Director SharePoint Product Management
	Ramin Vosough Vice President, Products Neudesic
	Michael Wu Principal Scientist, Analytics Lithium Technologies, Inc.
	Tim Young VP, Social Enterprise VMware

Mobile Connect

As I mentioned earlier, mobility will play a major roll in this year’s conference. Emulating the success E2 has achieved in bringing LOB and technical leaders together to ensure they’re working in lockstep, UBM TechWeb is launching Mobile Connect, the defining conference for mobility in the enterprise. The event will take place alongside Enterprise 2.0 Boston at the Hynes Convention Center, June 18 – 21, 2012.

The Enterprise 2.0 Conference has been a major force in leading the enterprise social software market, and with the announcement of Mobile Connect, UBM TechWeb continues to play a leadership role, helping people harness the opportunity mobile technology presents to change the way they do business, serve customers and go to market. Mobile is here and companies need a forum to debate and define how this disruptive technology will accelerate their business. Mobile Connect will bring together enterprise mobility thought leaders to discuss the innovations in mobile, and how forward-thinking companies are getting the technology to work for them, providing unprecedented business value. The conference will explore topics including:

Mobile App Development
CoIT
Analytics
Voice Input
Video
Mobile Management
Mobile Platforms
Enterprise app stores
Tablets
Location based services
Mobilizing business processes
Mobile Networking (WAN and WiFi)
Bring Your Own Device
Security and Governance.

Craig Mathias and Maribel Lopez are the Mobile Connect Conference Co-Chairs and will be driving the content for the events. E2 attendees with a full conference pass will be able to attend Mobile Connect sessions and meet with Mobile Connect sponsors on the show floor.

Digital Happenings in 2012

E2’s digital arm continues to grow. We host two virtual events per annum, and our webcasts series runs throughout the year. A couple of E2 events to note on your calendar:

Feb 16, 2012: E2 Virtual Event; Topic: Social Analytics: The Bridge to Business Value
September 26, 2012: E2 Virtual Event; Topic: The Power of Convergent Disruption: What’s Next in Enterprise Apps

And of course expect more great coverage from David Carr and all of our contributors over on The BrainYard.com. We’ve got a lot to look forward to and I’m excited about what lies ahead in 2012.

What I learned at Enterprise 2.0 Santa Clara – Day 1 #e2conf

Mon, 14 Nov 2011 16:33:22 -0700

Enterprise 2.0 Santa Clara kicked off today with pre-conference workshops, where attendees filled up rooms to get their social business education on. As I walked through the convention center, I saw a lot of old friends, colleagues, as well as first time attendees who were in awe of all the great content Paige Finkelman put together for the event. As usual, the twitter feed was active with great pieces of information that attendees were getting from the workshops. (Reminder the official hashtag is #e2conf)

I was able to attend a few sessions this morning and in the spirit of sharing, I want to pass along some things I learned at Day 1 of Enterprise 2.0 Santa Clara:

Internal (Enterprise) communities are a good way to expose needs and matching needs of members.
You have to share what is good and what is not so good to get a true sense of what is working and what isn’t.
Community is about getting members to a certain level of “social comfort” #e2conf (@rhappe)
Community is where work happens.
When welcoming new members, there is always a “what’s next”
Advocates play a huge role in enterprise communities
1. Share community work
2. Increase & reach – word of mouth
3. Prune & Create
4. Source of Trusted Feedback

I can tell you that my brain is very happy after absorbing all of the information today. I’m looking forward to continuing my Enterprise 2.0 Santa Clara education tomorrow. You can too – register now for a *25% Discount on Enterprise 2.0 Conference passes or a free expo pass by using the following Priority code: CPHJES11 and attend all of the free sessions.

Feel free to follow me on Twitter for more inside Enterprise 2.0 updates.

Let’s do this!

Cheers,

Jason

People, Culture and Internal Communications (HR)

Mon, 07 Nov 2011 10:51:18 -0700

‘Human Resources’ is an early 1960′s term but now seems pretty archaic in our ‘always on’ era of broadband and mobile networked connectivity. The needs of the people and collective cultures within enterprises continue to evolve rapidly, with increasing emphasis placed on interactions through the firewall with prospects, customers and partners being seen of value in some industries, although by no means all.

Human Resources responsibilities – recruiting needed talent, managing it, complying with disparate global payroll requirements and dealing with staffing changes and succession plans involves executing many complex processes, checks and balances. Like IT departments, HR professionals have to keep vital enterprise systems functioning, often with legacy technologies, before they can get to more strategic and tactical focuses in order to provide greater efficiency in the future to meet new business goals and needs.

Leveraging the power of collaborative networking technologies to meet specific business goals, Human Resources professionals are well placed to improve productivity by being the center of a culture designed for more efficient knowledge and real time intelligence flow. Finding time to get out from under the weight of existing responsibilities to take the logical role of running a more collaborative culture is a huge challenge – we’ll be focusing on how to achieve this.

Our people, culture and internal communications track has shaped up nicely. We’re kicking off the day with ‘The Evolution of Talent Management ‘ – a conversation with Mark Bennet of Oracle and Andrew McCarthy of Ultimate software, two seasoned professionals who know the evolution of enterprise needs for HR Technology extremely well. We’ll cover historical context and previous generations before diving into what ‘Talent Management’ means today and for the future in our rapidly changing workforces which are increasingly global – but also increasingly fragmented and distributed.

We then switch gears in our next track for a fascinating look at how Facebook manage their 3000 person internal culture, half of whom are ‘millenials’. Molly Graham will discuss how their rapidly evolving culture is geared up for bold, fast moving growth and evolution. We will hear about Facebook’s core employee values and guiding company principles as well as insights into work processes and motivations. Technology provider Rypple will provide some additional insights on working with Facebook – this is sure to provide some fascinating insights into the leading social network’s guiding tenets.

“Enterprises Speak on Culture and Performance’ will have an interesting blend of participants: Managing director at the Management Innovation eXchange (MIX) Management Lab Michele Zanini will provide broader insights, while Jobvite VP of Customer Success, David Lahey will speak to what enterprises are seeking to improve their talent pool. Secure file transfer vendor Accellion will bring the realities of IT security to the conversation to keep us grounded.

We round out the track with ‘New Strategic and Tactical Trends in Social Learning’ an important and often overlooked topic in our era of assumptions about supposedly effortless adoption choices by individuals of ways of working. New approaches to getting employees and partners up to speed on business needs are being heavily influenced by social networking against a foundation of traditional learning resources. How much are approaches really shifting and what is working for enterprises in a tight economy with ever more sophisticated knowledge flow needs? Former co-founder and CTO of THINQ enterprise learning management tools Amar Dhaliwal is now Senior Vice President of Product Operations at Saba, who now own THINQ. Michael Rose is CEO of Knoodle Powering Social Learning & Presentations and rounding out the conversation will be Nick Stein of of Rypple, the innovative social performance management firm.

The once a year performance review is widely seen as hopelessly out of touch with real time enterprise activities and annual usage of associated software is increasingly being questioned. Real time feedback is a given at companies like Facebook: but to what extent are training guard rails needed to shape behaviors, rather than reacting to events either annually or in real time? Getting the balance between both approaches is important, particularly in rapidly changing business environments.

We try to get continuity between sessions, and since they all occur on the 15th we hope you’ll join us for what should be a very stimulating series of conversations!

2-WAY SSL == TWICE PHISHED

Mon, 18 May 2009 13:16:26 -0600

[This thought paper is from Rel-ID Technologies Inc. - a Uniken venture]

Authors Sanjay Deshpande, Dr. Pat Shankar, Eashwar Ganapathy

Basics of Identity and Authentication - In order to be able to identify / authenticate any entity (be it man or machine), the entity must be characterized by a unique set of symbols, as per the adopted representation scheme. During the process of actually identifying / authenticating the entity, these characteristics are observed and matched against those that were captured earlier and associated with the entity.

The act of establishing identity is identification. An Identity System must be able to represent, provide, maintain and establish identity. The identity representation framework must ensure that it is extremely difficult to compromise the individual identities it deals with. Identity and identification are central to any interaction, both in real and virtual (digital) systems, typically where the interaction entails access to or manipulation of protected resource(s).

For example, we are identified by our name, social security number, passport number, national ID card, fingerprint, voice print, DNA print etc. The context of identification determines the parameters used to determine the identity. While establishing our identity, one or more of these characteristics are elicited / captured from us, and matched against previously captured and stored characteristics.

Let’s take a look at prevalent IDENTITY TECHNOLOGIES

Login-Password The login-password is captured and stored A PRIORI with the server and then compared with the login-password that is presented before subsequent interactions with the login-password-secured system.
Biometrics (fingerprint/voice/DNA/iris-scan) The biometric is captured and stored A PRIORI and then compared with the biometric data that is presented before subsequent interactions with the biometric-secured system.
Photo-ID Cards After verifying that the Photo-ID Card is authentic using a system with a card-reader, the PHOTO on the ID-CARD is matched with the individuals face as well as the system-retrieved photo expected to be on the card.

Note that AUTHENTICATION NEEDS A PRIORI INFORMATION.

PKI, Digital Certificates, SSL and Authentication - PUBLIC KEY CRYPTOGRAPHY, aka Asymmetric Cryptography, is a form of cryptography in which the key used to encrypt a message differes from the key used to decrypt it; the user has a pair of keys - a public key and private key. The private key is kept secret, while the public key may be widely distributed. The keys are related mathematically, but the private key cannot be computationally derived from the public key in 'reasonable' time, and vice versa. Messages encrypted with the public key can only be decrypted with the corresponding private key and vice versa. Further, in conjunction with a signing algorithm and a signature-verification algorithm the key pair can be used to send verifiably signed messages

The two main branches of public key cryptography are -

Public Key Encryption - A message encrypted with a recipient's public key cannot be decrypted by anyone but the recipient (using his/her corresponding private key). This ensures confidentiality of messages thus encrypted. An analogy for public-key encryption is that of a locked mail slot. The mail slot is exposed and accessible to the public - its location (the postal address) is, in essence, the public key. Anyone who knows the location can go to the door and drop a message through the slot. However, only the person who possesses the key can open the mailbox and read the messages.
Digital Signatures - A signing algorithm, given a message and the private key, produces the signature. And a signature verification algorithm, given a message, its signature and the correct public key, can verify that the message has not been modified with since signing (generation of the signature). This ensures non-repudiation of the message thus sent. An analogy for digital signatures is the sealing of an envelope with a personal wax seal. The recipient checks that the seal is intact and corresponds to that of the sender, before opening the message.

A central problem in public-key cryptography is proving that a public key, which is publicly available, is authentic, and has not been tampered with, or replaced, by a malicious 3rd party. This problem is solved by using a Public Key Infrastructure (PKI), in which one or more 3rd parties, called Certificate Authorities (CA), certify ownership of key pairs. Another approach, used by PGP, is the 'web of trust' method to ensure authenticity of key pairs.

In PKI, a public key certificate (or digital certificate) is an electronic document which incorporates a digital signature to bind together a public key with an identity - information such as the name of a person or organization, their address... The certificate can be used to verify that a public key belongs to an entity. In practice this verification entails verifying that the digital signatures in the certificate were indeed generated using the correct private keys. In a typical PKI scheme, the signature is generated by a Certifying Authority (CA). In a web of trust scheme, the signature is either from the owner (a self-signed certificate) or another user ('endorsements'). In either case, the signatures on a certificate are attestations by the certificate signer that the information in the certificate and the public key belong together.

Why do websites face PHISHING attacks even after adopting DIGITAL CERTIFICATES and SSL technology? What exactly is wrong with DIGITAL CERTIFICATES?

In the 1990’s the DIGITAL CERTIFICATE technology was introduced by VERISIGN bundled with NETSCAPE. The idea was to issue certificates to entities requesting one from VERISIGN. This technology was based on the PKI scheme (made popular by RSA in the 1980’s). The term Certificate Authority was born and VERISIGN became the first such CA. Eventually other entities could become CAs by purchasing special certificates from VERISIGN or other CA’s and a CA chain came in to existence. The browser technology then invented by NETSCAPE incorporated the certificate technology and along with the SSL protocol became the de facto standard for SECURE INTERNET TRANSACTIONS. Since then this technology, that has been assumed to secure the internet transactions, went on to become a regulatory requirement for most institutions world-over.

Quite frequently, due to evolution, and at times mass acceptance of a technology, the industry seems to overlook some basic but extremely FUNDAMENTAL aspects of technology. Such ignorance (though unintentional) leads to serious security flaws – flaws that are exploited by fraudsters.

DIGITAL CERTIFICATES ARE VERIFIED NOT IDENTIFIED (or AUTHENTICATED) SINCE THERE IS NO DIRECT A PRIORI KNOWLEDGE ABOUT THE CERTIFICATE WITH THE VERIFYING PARTY / PROGRAM.

The Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) and the Transport Layer Security (TLS) protocols use DIGITAL CERTIFICATES to establish a secure connection between a SERVER and a CLIENT. They are MEMORY-LESS protocols – they were designed to be so in order to make existing and newly developed web applications integrate with them seamlessly - for seamless interoperability. Both protocols are based on CERTIFICATE VERIFICATION. This proves to be a fundamental, subtle and yet non-trivial loophole when used for AUTHENTICATION – there is NO A PRIORI knowledge about the CLIENT or SERVER side certificates available at the verifying side of the connection, during the protocol exchange. A priori knowledge is a fundamental requirement for any AUTHENTICATION PROTOCOL, be it 1-WAY or 2-WAY.

Although the SERVER has a DIGITAL CERTIFICATE which is used to establish a secure SSL connection with the CLIENT – the CLIENT does not have any A PRIORI knowledge of this CERTIFICATE (public key). The SSL protocol only VERIFIES that the CERTIFICATE IS VALID and was issued by the valid CA (as per the contents of the certificate). The equivalent in real life would be to accept an ID card as valid simply because the card has not been tampered with – although the person carrying the card may not be the same person you are trying to authenticate.

Due to this flaw – any application can claim to be the “right or authentic” SERVER to a CLIENT as long as it has a VALID certificate - the same argument can be extended if one is using a CLIENT CERTIFICATE as well (in case of 2-WAY SSL). If 1-WAY SSL protocol is a VERIFICATION protocol – how can 2-WAY SSL protocol claim to eliminate the fundamental issues of AUTHENTICATION – since a 2-WAY SSL PROTOCOL is equivalent to 2 instances of the same 1-WAY SSL VERIFICATION PROTOCOL implemented on both CLIENT and SERVER side.

Have we missed something when it comes to using certificate technology as an identity system for IDENTIFYING WEBSITES?

As per the SSL Protocol, the client confirms that the CERTIFICATE produced by the server is VALID – that the contents of the certificate have not been tampered with, and that the domain name in the certificate indeed is the same as the domain name to which you are currently connected. That is to say, a CERTIFICATE can only be VERIFIED to the extent of the claims made on it – that it belongs to the ENTITY that has presented the CERTIFICATE. However, the client cannot confirm whether it is the SAME ENTITY that the USER is trying to connect to.

A fraudster gets a CERTIFICATE issued to himself/herself, with a domain name that sounds or looks similar, and presents the CERTIFICATE to the user – the SSL/HTTPS layer will NOT be able to tell you whether the USER is indeed connected to the website he/she wants to connect to. This loophole is not addressed and cannot be addressed in the way the DIGITAL CERTIFICATE TECHNOLOGY and SSL are implemented in the internet today.

Is it possible to correct the present system of DIGITAL CERTIFICATES?

No. Since it would mean a sea change in the entire process of creating, issuing, distributing and identifying the certificates.

If one has implemented the DIGITIAL CERTIFICATE Technology, does that mean their IDENTITY cannot be compromised?

Well, one can make their own educated judgment based on the arguments presented in this article.

According to us, ONCE the IDENTITY has been confirmed, the CERTIFICATE technology could be used to exchange encryption keys, and secure the transaction – IT SHOULD NOT BE USED TO ESTABLISH or AUTHENTICATE THE IDENTITY.

Why not?

The reason why DIGITAL CERTIFICATE TECHNOLOGY is what it is today is because of the fundamental nature of ‘online applications’. Digital Certificates themselves are tools to ensure that a given datum communicated from one end to the other is not tampered with and is ‘signed’ using the private secret corresponding to the publicly available ‘certificate’. The use of digital certificate technology between an all-purpose web-browser and any specific security-critical application can at best be described as a marriage of convenience – essentially because online applications came first!

Conclusions

The fundamental tenet of ‘securing’ any application is to uniquely, unambiguously and reliably identify the user of the application before authorizing and executing any action on the identified user’s behalf.
Furthermore, any centralized and fully automated ‘trust-building mechanism’ for capturing, storing and verifying the trust between ‘essentially anonymous entities’ across wide spectra of businesses and geographies will come with inherent weaknesses – they will be as secure as the weakest link in the security chain built around it.

The Future of Work is Now! – #e2conf

Fri, 04 Nov 2011 14:34:02 -0600

Working in the enterprise has changed dramatically over the past 5 years. The cubicle walls are being torn down as organizations are now leaning towards more open space environments. See picture.

The enterprise is not only tearing down the physical walls, but the communication walls as well. In the past messages always came from the top and then filtered down to the rest of the organization.

Employees were “told” about how the latest strategic company initiative would make the company grow and their job easier from executives that often times failed to ask for feedback or ideas from their team. This is a clear example of one way communication – a very enterprise 1.0 way of getting work done.

As we’ve seen with the emergence of social media in our daily lives – people now have a way (voice) to question, follow up on facts and more importantly learn from like minded individuals who may be thinking the same thing they are. The enterprise has realized the value of social and how to take advantage of these new tools to make the enterprise a more collaborative work environment. Social enterprise tools allow an open and transparent dialogue between employees globally, which will in turn make the work experience richer and more fulfilling for everyone involved.

Enterprise 2.0 provides an opportunity for employees to learn more about the company in a more immersive way and become more engaged with other employees –helping to incent communication and collaboration across the company resulting in improved ROI.

At Enterprise 2.0, the leading social business event, you will learn about the latest social business technologies, network with peers and unlock the value of your organization. Receive extensive education on the collaboration life-cycle — from setting a social strategy to technology interopability to adoption, with case studies to guide you along the way.

See the latest tools and technologies in the Expo Pavilion and learn from thought leaders in Enterprise 2.0′s comprehensive conference. Topics include:

Social Apps and Platforms	Mobile Enterprise
People, Culture and Internal Communications	Architecture
Community Management: Inside the Enterprise	Business Leadership
Community Management: Engaging External Audiences	Technology Leadership
Sales and Marketing	Governance, Risk and Compliance
Video and Unified Communications	Analytics and Metrics
Strategies for SharePoint

Take a deep dive into key topics in pre-conference workshops on Monday, November 14 including:

Insider’s Guide to Evaluating Architectures and Selecting Vendors
Building a Unified Communications and Collaboration Roadmap
Community Managers’ Toolkit
Organization Next
SharePoint 2010 as a Social and Collaboration Platform: Key Opportunities and Roadblocks
How Do You Measure That?

Register now for a *25% Discount on Enterprise 2.0 Conference passes or a free expo pass by using the following Priority code: CPHJES11