Infrablog

The Next Trust Infrastructure: Securing Mashups

2009-03-09T01:07:59Z

There is no doubt that mashups will be an important construct of the next Internet. The ability to "compose" distributed Web services into one single aggregate service or view is a significant enabler. The lightweightness of HTML and JavaScript speak to the simplicity of a successful programming model. Add to this the emergence of open standards like OAuth, and the need to distribute functionality across screen boundaries (PC, mobile and IP TV), and the picture becomes very clear; mashups and widgets are likely lead the componentization of the Web and become an important distribution mechanism.

For mashups to become ubiquitous, a trust infrastructure is needed. To establish trust between a widget aggregator (a consumer portal, the enterprise portal or your homepage or TV screen), and a widget provider, protocols like OAuth essentially rely on the exchange of shared secrets. This works well when there are only a few big portals serving as aggregators. However, because they require pair-wise trust relationships, the approach does not scale to a truly distributed environment. In particular, the model breaks very quickly in the enterprise as the number of network end-points (enterprise portals and SAAS) explodes.

Ravi Ganesan and his new company SafeMashup may have found the answer to this thorny problem. Ravis' answer is brilliantly simple: reuse the existing and proven trust infrastructure of the Web. Indeed, SafeMashup enables existing CAs to issue credentials to mashers and mashees. These credentials are identical to the one they issue to Web sites today. Because Web 2.0 protocols such as OAuth require a shared secret, Ravi uses the SSL handshake and the issued SSL certificate as a secure method to establish a shared secret between the masher and the mashee. This approach allows him to layer SSL and certificates on top of the Web 2.0 protocols without requiring any change to these protocols. Brilliant!

There is no doubt that broad deployment of mashups requires an open, standard-based scalable trust infrastructure. Reusing the existing PKI infrastructures and its rugged SSL cousin strikes me as a very good idea! After all, when the wheel works, why reinvent the wheel. So, "bonne chance" to Ravi and SafeMashup. Indeed, there is something truly exciting brewing in San Antonio, Texas.

OpenID and the User-Centric Time Machine

2009-02-22T17:45:07Z

There have been a few very insightful discussions from Chris Messina and other regarding the PIP as a secure file, so I thought I would share some of our longer-term product goals.

Today, the PIP file vault is a personal digital locker for our users to manually upload their most personal files. That by itself is not an innovation. In fact, the Web is full of personal storage services like Gmail. Online storage provides immediate and useful value, yet its usefulness is limited by the amount of work an end-user is willing to commit (uploading takes work!).

Now it is interesting to consider how this simple Web 1.0 model of personal digital storage evolves when combined with an OpenID provider. Together, can these technologies allow us to transfer and store in one single place under our control the personal files, private data and rich media content that is today spread throughout the Internet? In short, can a simple file vault become the in-cloud "time machine" of our distributed digital lifestyle?

A SAAS and device-centric view of cloud storage:

A lot has happened with network storage in the last few years. One of the most notorious disruptions is Amazon S3. I would characterize Amazon S3 as a SAAS-centric view of storage. Web applications can outsource the storage function to a highly cost-effective network that already has reached economy of scale. Obviously, it fits the Amazon economic model perfectly. Closer to the end user, we find Microsoft and Apple storage services. Their approach is similar in concept. To them, cloud storage is merely a device enhancement and synchronization is their lingua Franca (iSynch for Apple, Live Mesh for Microsoft). The concept certainly has merit for users with data spread across multiple devices. However, this is a very device-centric view of the world. It fails to realize that increasingly, our critical data resides across many Internet Web Sites with no ability to synch.

A user-centric viewpoint: centralized storage for distributed private data

So, what happens now when one looks at storage with a Web 2.0 user-centric view instead of the cloud-centric view of Amazon, and the device-centric view of Microsoft and Apple? One sees independent, distributed and sometime competing Web services. Through these services, users store personal information, create new data, and acquire digital content. Some of that content is low value and can be left behind. Some of his data is social in nature and is probably best shared with our Facebook friends. However, some of this data is also highly confidential and personal in nature. In that case, we, the end user, should be able to request its safe transfer, and backup to a digital locker that we fully control (the OP).

Towards a "Locker Connect" mechanism

Using the OpenID and OAuth models, such private data transfer can be authenticated and authorized by the end-user (although the data flows from the RP to the OP). The locker network end point address can be discovered as any identity attribute would. Finally, a user interface ala Facebook Connect can provide a friendly user experience while ensuring a user-centric control point (the user controls what, where, when and if the data is being sent).

The "wow" effect

The use cases certainly sound unlimited. Think digital health care and the $20B stimulus package: whether I am accessing my doctor, hospital, lab or pharmacy Web sites, I can now authenticate across all health service providers and authorize the audited transfer of personal health records back to my locker. Think rich media content: I can now purchase digital music, movies, or books across multiple e-tailers and have the bits (or maybe just the digital rights) sent back to my locker. Think payment and billing: please, send all my purchase and online statements back to my digital locker.

Yes, we can! With data portability and OpenID, a simple file vault can grow into a much more compelling personal identity service. And who knows. With security and private storage, we may even have a real business model!

PIP Update: a free secure digital lock box

2009-02-17T17:54:30Z

The PIP team just released a new feature on Friday: a secure digital vault to store your most personal documents online. Think of it as a digital lock box in the cloud to store copies of your most important documents online (deed of trust, will, passport, property pictures for insurance, etc).

Since, these documents are your secrets, all files are encrypted using key management best practices. To increase security, access to the vault requires two-factor authentication. If you already have a VIP token, simply link it to your PIP account. For our most cost conscious PIP users, we offer a free mobile version of the VIP OTP token. It can be downloaded to your phone here (I use the iPhone Beta version that will be available soon). Once strongly authenticated, the vault opens (Flash is your friend) and you can begin to upload files.

The activation process is really straightforward, and our usability team has done a lot of work on the user interface. Moreover, it is free to all PIP users. So, try the new features and tell us what you think. By combining OpenID, strong authentication, password vault and secure storage, the PIP is getting one step closer to realizing VeriSign's long term vision of a user-centric identity service that will enable and protect our digital self.

FaceBook Joins OpenID: Goodbye OpenID, Bonjour Open Connect?

2009-02-12T22:15:29Z

Great news for OpenID aficionados, the largest ~~identity~~ social network is embracing OpenID. With 221M users, one could easily conclude that OpenID has just received the stimulus package that it needed to finally achieve critical mass. But, what does it really mean for OpenID? While we are all looking forward to the day FaceBook becomes both an OpenID provider and relying party, the initial impact is more likely to be a significant change in the OpenID user interface. As shown, here and there, is clear that from a UI standpoint, Google and FaceBook are converging in terms of how to achieve login and exchange of personal data across relying parties and social networks.

While FaceBook will likely integrate OpenID as the "alternate" login method for FaceBook Connect, Google and its followers will do the same with Open Social and Google Friends Connect (in the case of Google, you may also get the friendly Yahoo!, MySpace and AOL followers). By becoming the alternate login method (but a more obscure one), the risk for OpenID is to be relegated to the level of OAuth and SAML as authentication protocols without any consumer brand recognition. Alternatively, OpenID may rise above the "open stack" plumbing to become the network mark that ensures interoperability across the FaceBook and Google networks. That my friend, is of course politics, but with a Facebook on board, it would appear that this week, this old chimera of federated Internet identity may have made a significant leap forward.

New PIP Feature: Add any Site to your 1-Click Sign-in List

2009-01-12T02:13:57Z

This week, the PIP team is releasing an improved version of the 1-click sign in. The great news is that PIP users are no longer restricted to our small initial list of supported sites. Indeed, you can now add any of your favorite sites to your 1-click list (with a few caveats such as pure flash sites). Over time, we will monitor the most popular sites being added and we will include them to the default 1-click list.

This is great news for PIP users, especially for the non-US community who is no longer limited to our choice of sites (I must confess that our initial list was very US-centric). By the way, kudos to the PIP engineering team: doing all this in JavaScript without any browser plug-in is a real engineering "tour de force". Also, the team also improved the UI and performance of the bookmarklet window. Note that you will be prompted to re-install the 1-click bookmarklet.

The Internet is getting easier. Happy 1-click navigation!

My OpenID New Year's Wish List

2009-01-04T06:34:29Z

2009 promise to be a pivotal year for OpenID. So far, industry adoption has been strong with consumer powerhouses such as Google, Yahoo!, Microsoft and MySpace backing up the technology. At the same time, consumer adoption remains limited to early adopters. Meanwhile, FaceBook, the identity provider of choice for 160M consumers is promoting its own alternative in the form of Friends Connect, creating the risk of balkanization. With a new year beginning, a recently augmented leadership, and high competitive stakes, the moment felt opportune to put together my 2009 wish list for OpenID.

Execution: The Separation of Concerns

My first wish is organizational. The OpenID foundation board host really bright and passionate people. Folks are committed to the success of OpenID. Across the board, there is also a strong willingness to do what is right. Nevertheless, execution on key priorities appears to remain sluggish at times. Perhaps, the foundation needs a more effective way to drive execution. There, it could borrow a page from what larger corporations do extremely well. They separate governance from execution. The OpenID board is governance. It needs to articulate priorities, but create focused committees around these priorities. Then, it needs to empower the best elements in the board and the community to drive the outcome. Sounds obvious, but by enforcing that separation of concern and empowering people to work in parallel, I think the OpenID foundation could gain tremendously effectiveness in 2009.

Identifier: Email Address as OpenID, at Last!

In the last two years, I have been regularly in a position to explain and pitch OpenID to Financial Institutions, Mobile Network Operators and MSOs. By experience, I have learned that OpenID detractors and alternate technology providers will always bring two detrimental arguments against OpenID: user experience and security. The usability argument can be summarized as follows: "How much marketing dollars do you plan on spending to teach consumers to type a URL instead of a user name?". The answer is simple and usually reminiscent of Omer Simpson's catch phrase. So, in 2009, let us do ourselves a favor. Let us remove the leading argument against OpenID. Let us make email addresses first class OpenID identifiers. It is not about alienating URLs as identifiers, it is about enabling email addresses alongside URLs, because millions of consumers already regard email as their primary online identity and an email address is already their user name across so many sites.

Security: OpenID Security Analysis and Best Practices

The second argument that OpenID detractors will always bring up is security. In fact, there is a lot of confusion around the security of OpenID as a protocol and its propensity to phishing as a user experience. There again, detractors and naysayers are having a ball. What we need there is a neutral third party study that explains why OpenID is a sound protocol, and describes the best security practices to deploy the technology. None of the companies involved in the foundation should be responsible for such study. Instead, the board should sponsor an independent and reputable third party security lab to lead the security review. Once it is complete, the foundation should publish the results of the security analysis, alongside the recommended deployment best practices.

Branding: Establishing the "OpenID Network Mark"

Everyone agrees that OpenID needs to emerge as a brand that consumers can recognize. Similarly to Visa for payment, Dolby for music and Gore-Tex for rainwear, OpenID ought to become the "ingredient brand" for identity. The reason the OpenID brand needs to emerge is that we need a "network mark" that transcends all the identity silos. Very much like consumers know that their bank card will work when they see the Cirrus network logo on an ATM machine, consumers need to know that their identity will work on a Web site that carries the OpenID network logo. A network mark has a simple yet powerful meaning. It does not matter whether the card is from Bank of America, Wells Fargo or WAMU, it just works with this ATM machine. It does not matter whether the identity is from Google, Yahoo! or MySpace, it just works with this Web site.

In the OpenID brand lies the one big problem. Although a strong OpenID brand will prove to be good for everyone in the long run (by creating ubiquitous interoperability, Visa helped card issuing banks make more money than they would made on their own), at this time, none of the large consumer companies involved in the OpenID foundation have any incentive to promote another brand than their own. Therefore, the foundation needs to create a forcing function. My recommendation would be to leverage its ownership of the OpenID intellectual property to enforce the network mark. Let us keep OpenID free to all, but let us require everyone who uses the technology and benefit from the free IP to display the OpenID logo.

Avoiding the balkanization of identity to achieve the broadest possible user-centric federation network is what is at stakes in 2009. Undeniably, this is the year when OpenID can get from good to great. The OpenID network will rise or OpenID will become another commodity protocol encapsulated in the stacks of more fragmented identity networks (such as Google Open Connect or FaceBook Connect). It is up to us the OpenID community to make things right by seizing the opportunity. As we say in the valley, it is all about mere and simple execution. Yes, indeed, this coming year ought to be a critical and exciting year for Internet identity and OpenID.

Google's Smart OpenID Move

2008-11-04T00:42:35Z

There has been a lot of buzz around Google's OpenID announcement last week. First, because Google awkwardly decided to change the service end point discovery part of the protocol. The good news is that Google fixed their faux-pas fairly quickly. In fact, they had no reason not too follow the spec and alienate the OpenID community.

More significant and more interesting however, was Google OpenID departure from requiring users to use URL as OpenID identifiers. Instead Google wants to let users use their GMail address as an OpenID identifier. Using GMail addresses as OpenID is not only a justifiable way to improve the OpenID user experience; it is also a very smart move by Google in their quest to become the dominant Internet identity provider (IDP).

As a consumer, there is no doubt that using an email address is the obvious identifier. Email is to consumers what domain names and URL are to businesses: a natural identifier. After all, email is already my Amazon, Apple and many other sites login. It is the intuitive OpenID that any consumer will expect to type in any relying party login box. In the long run, not having to teach millions of consumers that they should type a URL instead of an email address will prove a huge win for OpenID. Too bad it took though it took the weight of one to move an entire community forward.

But the consumer is not the only winner here. I think Google will prove to be the other beneficiary. By making email addresses, the de-facto OpenID identifier, guess who is now more likely to become the identity provider of choice for millions of consumers? I would venture that those IDPs who are already providing millions of Web mailboxes to consumers, have just gained a position of strength. Coincidentally, Google, Yahoo! and Microsoft have quite a few of those under management! Of course, Yahoo! and MSN are well tame rivals as far as Google is concerned. No, to appreciate this chess move, we ought to look at the other guardians of our Web identity: the social networks.

So, by changing the OpenID user interface, Google is now in a position of strength vis-à-vis OpenID, forcing FaceBook further into a dead-end proprietary identity APIs strategy. The beauty is that Google did not even have to force a button or any branding on relying party web sites. The choice of identifier alone will make it easier for consumers to choose Google over FaceBook. I would now expect to see Google drive OpenID integration across all APIs related to social networks and mobile (we already know that OAuth/OpenID integration is next) at full speed.

So, for sure, with Google and email, OpenID has gained a lot this week. At the same time, the idea of a federated Web identity network dominated by the three large Web mail providers is becoming more real. Nevertheless, consumers should rejoice. This week was a big step towards less name and passwords, and in the end, more convenience is certainly no evil.

DECE or the Digital Content Cloud: Last Chance for DRM.

2008-09-12T16:06:55Z

For almost 18 months, we have been working with the Movie studios on creating a blueprint architecture for rich digital media (a fancy name for digital movies). The concept falls in what I like to call the "big idea" category. The goal is to create an Internet eco-system that re-creates the user experience and commercial success of the DVD: an industry standard shared across all content providers, all retailers, and all device manufacturers.

Like the brick and mortar DVD, this new Internet DVD will share a common brand recognized by consumers worldwide; it will provide a common format with interoperable digital rights protection technology; The Internet DVD will be backed by a common usage policy that is consistent across movie studios and will provide a simple user experience for consumers. Believe it or not, we all believe that these lofty goals are achievable and we even have a proof of concept to support our irrational exuberance. You will just have to wait for this effort to become consumer facing to see it.

If successful, this "Internet DVD" standard, will allow any consumer to purchase and download movies from any online store (pick your favorite ecommerce store), and view it on any device (a PC, an IP TV, a mobile device). From the studios standpoint, the concept of the Internet DVD arises from witnessing the Internet speed transformation of the music industry: loss of sales driven by pirated content, emergence of music distribution silos where the lack of interoperability eventually leads to the elimination of rights protection altogether, a risk that the movie industry is not willing to accept without a good fight.

A key requirement of the "Internet DVD" is to enable DRM interoperability, which is timely considering the focus of regulatory instances, such as the European government. Of course, many will argue that the easiest way to achieve DRM interoperability is to get rid of DRM altogether. My theory (a lonely one in the blogosphere) is that a cloud-based approach is not only technically viable to create DRM interoperability. It is also the only possible approach to creating a user experience that resonates with consumers.

Indeed, the key to making the Internet DVD an insanely great consumer product is both open standards and a cloud approach. The cloud services (including OpenID-based identity services, of course,) are essential to mask the complexity of dealing with multiple DRM systems, multiple content formats and multiple retailers. The other trick is to leverage the cloud to provide additional functionality that the silos dismiss today: rights locker, perpetual ownership and the separation of the purchase from download experience. That last one is likely to resonate with marketers as the Internet DVD will encourage impulse by without forcing consumers to be tethered to a 10GB pipe.

Of course, the proof is in the pudding. We still have a few challenges ahead. We need to prove that the industry can come together and create a compelling joint offering for digital entertainment. We also need to prove that the hereditary vices of DRM can be hidden from consumers by using a cloud-based approach. The immensity of such challenge aside, the immediate lesson to me is that the cloud can be a disruptive force when it comes to new product design. The cloud creates new dimension that can challenge common thinking and alter the status quo, like the well-established thinking that DRM is a dead end. One thing is sure. The movie industry is a fascinating world and it will be fun to see how the cloud allows it to reinvent its biggest commercial success. So, say hi to the Internet DVD, it may be coming to a computer near you very soon now.

The New Personal Identity Portal (PIP)

2008-08-20T17:45:53Z

Today, we are releasing a brand new version of the Personal Identity Portal (PIP). With support for two-factor authentication, the PIP remains a strong OpenID provider as VeriSign remains committed to the broad deployment of OpenID across the Internet. Beyond OpenID, the new PIP also includes some unique identity management features. As the user-centric identity movement reaches beyond authentication and attribute exchange, we wanted to evolve the PIP into an identity aggregation service that enhances control, convenience and security over personal data even when the data is scattered across non-interoperable Web sites.This theme of identity aggregation is going to remain an important product philosophy for us moving forward. Our first implementation focuses on personalization, convenience and security. This post provides a brief overview of the new features. For those of you who never read product description, you can sign up for a free PIP account here. For the more curious minds, please, read on, and let us know what you think.

Personalization and the Personal Identity Page
The Personal Identity Page allows you to aggregate public identities and presence across multiple Web sites under your OpenID. In my case, my personal identity page can be found at nico.pip.verisignlabs.com. You can see that I have chosen to aggregate my Blog, my Flickr pictures, my YouTube videos, and other personal links to provide a complete reflection of my public Web persona. With a Personal identity page, my OpenID URL now provides a simple way for people to find and discover my "aggregate me". Think of it as a modern version of public white pages. We have tried to keep it simple enough that it can be built within a few minutes, but rich enough to keep it interesting.
Of course, for many, the logical place to share their identity is their social network. For that reason, we have also created a FaceBook application. As shown below, the PIP FaceBook application lets you embed your "identity carrousel" into your FaceBook profile to share it with your friends.

Convenience and 1-Click Sign-in across any Web site
The PIP 1-click sign-in service may be one of the most interesting new features. The service aims at enabling single sign on across all popular Web 1.0 and Web 2.0 sites (whether they support OpenID or not). We have devised a client-less authentication solution that only requires one single click for you to log in across your social sites (FaceBook, Yahoo!, Google, MySpace...), your travel sites (TripIt, Expedia, United...), your financial site (Wells Fargo, E*Trade, ....), almost any of your sites, really! Think of it as a password vault in the cloud. Think of it as a universal single single-sign-on Web service. Since, we did not think you wanted to give all your names and passwords to VeriSign, we have designed it in such a way that VeriSign never sees your actual names and passwords (we only receive and store an encrypted form of them and you keep the secret key for yourself). Of course, you still need to log into the PIP (that is the one required login). Unlike most existing solutions out there, there is no client to install, only an optional bookmarklet to save in your browser (the install is drag and drop in Firefox and Safari and we have an automated install script for IE6 and IE7 users). It works on Windows, and the MAC. It will work in your 3G iPhone too, making OpenID and general login really user-friendly in a mobile environment (more in my next post). Note that the Beta 1-click service only supports 70 popular Web sites at this point. If your feedback is positive, we will add many more, so once again, let us know what you like and what you dislike.The bookmarklet is also a nifty navigation tool. When you are not on the login page of a Web site, it triggers a small navigation window (see above). The window displays the list of all the Web sites that you have registered with the 1-click sing-in service. Simply click any of these links; you will navigate to the site and be logged in automatically. No more URL to enter, no more name and passwords to remember or type, only your PIP OpenID!

Security and Free Digital certificates
Since the 1-click vault security hinges on the PIP authentication, we wanted to offer you a broad choice of strong authentication solutions. Last year, we enabled VIP credentials (OTP tokens) within the PIP. This year we added a free layer of security that does not require any hardware. Indeed, we are giving our PIP users a free VeriSign certificate to secure their PIP account. Certificates and PKI have often been blamed for poor user experience. Therefore, we decided to create a new user interface for logging in with a certificate. Instead of issuing an identity certificate, we are issuing what we call a "browser certificate. A browser certificate is anonymous. It does not contain any information about you. Think of it as an opaque token that you link against you PIP account to protect it (it provides a second authentication factor: "something you have". Your PIP login name and passwords remains your first authentication factor: "something you know"). You can install these certificates on Mac and Windows (as many as you need). The certificates are free. We are still working on the iPhone (we have encountered a few challenges with certificates with the iPhone Safari, but with a little help from Apple, we will get there).

Voila!
The whole PIP team has worked hard during the last 8 months to bring you all this new functionality. We are really excited to release this new version of the Personal Identity Portal to our growing PIP community. We hope you will enjoy using it as much as we enjoyed building it. Feel free to drop us a note, report bugs and make product suggestions. Our support email is support@verisignlabs.com. We are looking forward to your feedback!

PiP and the "Fun" Test

2008-05-30T18:18:21Z

As referenced on Mike Jones's blog, Fun Commutations has deployed a service at: http://idtheft.fun.de/ that attempts to demonstrate a man-in-the-middle based phishing attack against a number of OpenID providers using Janrain's IDSelector. Since our Personal Identity Provider or "PiP" is one of the providers included in the Selector we naturally had a look.

The good news is that there are a couple of features specifically designed in the PiP to combat the attacks noted in the demonstration. The first is found within the PiP itself. The optional feature is called "Secure Sign-On" and the way it works is that if the user has enabled it, they must first be logged into the PiP *before* they attempt to login to a RP. If they are not logged in and they attempt to login they will be presented with this message:

The important point is that any PiP user who has enabled this knows that they must first login, so in the "Fun" case seeing a login screen while having the feature enabled would immediately flag the user that they were being phished.

Secondly, this feature combined with our SeatBelt being used in conjunction with the PiP beta product affords even more detection. With SeatBelt if a user is entering their identity URL we immediately detect whether or not the user is logged in and if they aren't we give them the option to login to their account. With SeatBelt installed Firefox 2 and 3 users can clearly see if they are on the "correct" login page through a visual indicator in their status bar. There are a number of checks SeatBelt performs to insure that the login page the user is entering their credentials into is correct for their configured OP. In addition to the PiP, SeatBelt is supported by 9 other providers some of which are listed in the selector (more on this in a follow-up post).

In addition to these features our PiP product also provides 2 factor authentication through our VeriSign Identity Protection ("VIP") Authentication Service so at the end of the day our view is balancing usability with the layering of functionality to thwart the very thing that Fun in their demo attempts to bring forward. "Secure Sign-In" backed with 2 factor authentication and SeatBelt we believe is a step to providing a level of comfort to the OpenID community in continuing to drive usage and adoption.

Federation 2.0: In Search of a Switzerland for Identity Portability

2008-05-27T21:36:01Z

The controversy around personal and social data portability is growing. For consumers, it is an important issue because it will determine how much ownership they will be able to enforce upon their "digital identity" that lives today across competing Internet silos. For the silos, the Google, FaceBook, Yahoo! and Microsoft of the world, a lot is at stakes since, ultimately, it is about whom consumers will entrust with their digital self.

Undoubtedly, data portability is the natural child of federated identity (more on that in a future post). Personal and social data are an important part of any consumer identity'. Like identifiers, credentials and profile attributes, social graphs, activity streams belong to the end user who created them in the first place. In the long run, consumers will require full control, privacy, security and portability over such personal information. Therefore, the identity technical community must engineer a new and comprehensive identity portability layer. The new layer needs to broaden the tradition notion of identity federation beyond names, passwords and profile to encompass the full gamet of personal and social data. Furthermore, this new layer must support a plurality of identity service providers who can compete and distinguish themselves by the quality of their service and the user experience that they provide. Freeing our data off Web portals and social networks by creating a new service layer dominated by one single service provider is hardly trading one master for another.

Incidentally, putting the user first and ensuring plurality of competing identity service providers strikes as the fundamental principle that OpenID places on identity providers. The OpenID foundation has always be the strong proponent of a user-centric approach to Internet identity. Unlike many organizations, it appears to have achieved a balanced representation across the grass-root technical community and large big Internet corporations. Moreover, because of the strategic stakes it represents, the quest for personal data portability is likely to become the main driving force behind OpenID deployment and maybe, even the necessary solution to the so-called "relying party problem".

As a neutral ground, I hope the foundation will quickly realize that it has the opportunity and responsibility to provide the necessary leadership that helps clearing the technical issues around personal information and data portability. Yes, more than large Internet companies proclaiming their own APIs as open standards, it seems to me that OpenID can be the right foundation (pun intended) to lead towards a true interoperable solution for Internet data portability.

Friend Connect or the Deportalization of Social Networks

2008-05-19T19:52:00Z

The issue of personal data portability is rapidly moving center stage. So, what is the big fuss about and what is really at stake here?

For us, as consumers, it is an important issue because eventually, it will determine how much ownership we will be able to enforce upon our personal data and content, including our social graph, that today, is dispersed across competing social networks and Web portals.

For Google, and FaceBook (FB), the stakes are equally high. Ultimately, the winner could take it all and be the one who really drives revenue from social networking. But to understand, we need to review the controversy first.

It really all started with OpenSocial. OpenSocial was Google's response to the rapid rise towards hegemony of FB APIs. To counter FB, Google created an alternative that it self-proclaimed an open standard by rallying a large number of FB competitors behind it.

Competitive response aside, Open Social also arises from our industry's realization that social network is much more than a destination. Social networking is really a new application dimension. It is a new form of interactions that can augment almost any application, or any web site. To add social networking capabilities to an application, you need APIs. OpenSocial fills that gap.

With OpenSocial, Google is also reducing social network to mere "containers". Google is turning the social networking portals into a set interoperable data sources that it can dip into. In fact, with the consent of the end-user, these social databases become instantly accessible to a whole new layer of identity services. The first generation of these new of services is now known. It is called Google Friend Connect.

It is clear that FB understand the threat of a layer above social networks dominated by Google. Its decision to block Friend Connect under the excuse of privacy control does not fool anyone. It is also likely that OpenSocial may have forced FB into exposing its own APis to third party Web sites. Friend Connect, on the other hand, is consistent with Google "social cloud" strategy. It simply extends OpenSocial by alleviating the need for site owners to write code. Although it remains to be seen whether an embedded widget can provide the right user interface, by putting itself, between Web sites and social networks, Google is moving fast to disintermediate the leading social network. If Google were to succeed, it would surely make a significant dent into FB's $15B valuation.

But what is the real prize here? What is really at stakes? Let me venture an explanation. How do you discover sites, products, music, videos on the Internet? You Google it,of course. Now, in the real world, how do you discover products, movies, or books? Very often, you discover them through your social connections. Social events are always full of "I love this new product, you should really buy it too", "you must see that movie", "I highly recommend reading that book", "this restaurant is unbelievable". So maybe, social discovery is the perfect complement to search when it comes to generate and monetize traffic to other sites.

So here may lie Google's bet on Open Social. The bet is that social networking capabilities integrated into a Web site can drive viral traffic (because your social feed will notify your friends of a site visit or of a transaction, because you will recommend a merchant by becoming a 'member of the site' or writing a review, because you will trust a site by finding people you know who have already experienced this site). Not withstanding the data mining and advertising intelligence opportunity that sitting between sites and social networks can present in the long run, the bet is that social interactions will drive more site visitors. Of course, for an ad network like Google that strives on monetizing new customer acquisition and traffic, it is a very rational bet.

So while FB seems initially more concerned about keeping interactions within the walled garden, Google is forcing all the social networks to embrace a deportalization strategy. Of course, it is a smart move for Google who, unlike social networks, has already strong customers relationship with most Web sites through its AdWords and AdSense programs. Without access to a direct channel to online merchants and .COM sites, FB is in a relatively weaker position but it had to respond and Facebook Connect is its current answer to Google. Will FB be more effective in driving revenue by deportalizing its APis and driving traffic outside FB instead of raising the walls of the garden day by day? That remains to be seen.

At the end of the day, social traffic is still a theory in search of validation. For these merchants and Web site owners, that traffic may never materialize. To the non-believers, I can only oppose the success of Yelp whose sole purpose of its community is to drive traffic to local businesses. Considering the energy that Google is deploying around open Social and Friend Connect, we should have our final answer soon. One thing is almost certain, for the near future, the social cloud is likely to be the strongest market force driving internet-scale identity services, and that is very good news for OpenID.

The Business of Identity

2008-03-18T21:30:53Z

With the increasing visibility of OpenID, VeriSign gets often invited to conferences to discuss the implications of this new technology. One of the questions that I often get from the audience borrows a line from Jerry Mc Guire: "When technology is based on IP-free open standards, how do identity vendors and service providers make ends meet?" In other words: "Show me the money!" Broad question, so I thought I would get on the record to describe a few of the popular business theories around OpenID and discuss their respective merit.

The IDM Software Business Model:

The first answer is to observe that OpenID is a federation protocol and as such, it fits well within an identity management suite (very much like SAML, or WS-*). Vendors in that space are well known: CA, HP, IBM, Microsoft, Oracle, Sun, etc. IDM vendors derive revenue by licensing their identity management software to large enterprises. Single-Sign-On across enterprise applications still remains an unsolved problem within many enterprises. Because of it is ligthtweightness, OpenID carries the promise of simpler integration across many internal Web applications (enterprise portal, SAP, Oracle Web apps, etc...), making it an attractive IDM solution component and a must-have for most IDM software vendors.

The Service Aggregator Business Model:

OpenID is especially best suited for managing identities across consumer services. So, the natural early adopters will be consumer service aggregators, such as Mobile Network Operators and MSOs. Indeed, these companies view their millions of subscribers as an untapped strategic asset. The ability to leverage OpenID to more easily up-sell and cross-sell subscribers across a growing portfolio of services and channels (wireless, broadband and TV) has strong business appeal. In other words, federating within the walled garden makes good business sense: one unified identity, one converged brand experience, one view of the customer and the ability to subscribe existing customers across new services in one single click, whilst charging them on one single bill.

The Security Business Model:

As a consumer, if you have one consolidated identity for use across many Web services, you are more likely to want to protect that unique identity. It is also easier to do so, since only the identity provider needs to deal with the complexity of any additional security technology. In a shared identity eco-system, security solutions such as strong authentication become more cost-effective since the price of securing identities can now be shared across all the relying parties. In other words, economies of scale can be realized. This is exactly the VeriSign identity protection model that we introduced in early 2006. At that time, OpenID did not exist, so the chances of sharing a complete identity were pretty slim. Therefore, we decided to adopt a simpler sharing model where only the security (the second authentication factor) is shared across sites. Authentication services such as VIP are a good fit for OpenID as they make it relatively easy to turn any IDP into a strong IDP. Beside, if accepting a name and a password from a third party may not provide much additional value over a self-issued name and password, the idea that an identity provider will provide a more secure and stronger identity could well be a compelling value proposition for sites to start accepting OpenID as relying parties.

The Insurance Policy Model:

Building on the idea that what makes accepting a third-party as an identity provider is a stronger identity, arises the identity assurance model. In that model, the identity provider becomes a risk underwriter. Basically, the IDP "insures" the relying party on the validity and knowledge that it has about a given identity. The identity risk profile allows the IDP to make some explicit guarantees (e.g. "no charge back") and be compensated for it. For example, a bank who knows a lot about a consumer identity and purchase behavior could vouch for a consumer transaction to be trustworthy and underwrite the risk based on the consumer risk-profile that it has accumulated over time.

The Lead Generation and Advertising Model:

In OpenID everyone is focused on Single-Sign-On. The truth is that the real money-maker may be more about attribute exchange than simpler login. By attribute exchange, I mean the ability to seamlessly transmit a subscriber's registration profile and payment information in real-time. In that context, I can see OpenID become an enabler for CPA-based advertising. In the CPA model, the publisher and the ad network (IDP) get paid when the user registers with the advertiser (lead acquisition) or purchases from the advertiser (impulse buy). By removing the typing, OpenID can enable a much more effective CPA model where the user only needs to login into their identity provider to authorize a registration or a purchase. The ability to register a new customer and allow them to pay from any device within 1-click could prove a significant enabler for direct response advertising.

Of course, all these business models remain somewhat theoretical and unproven. However, the intuition is that there are many angles to consider when approaching OpenID from a business perspective. Interestingly, the breadth of opportunities should make the emerging standard more relevant to many leading Internet companies. This may explain the broad and growing attraction for federated identity, and OpenID in particular. That is all good news for the technology, as without business drivers, it will remain a technology construct that makes conferences headlines but is ignored by business minded leaders. That would be a shame of course as the best ideas are the one that can seduce consumers, technologist and those who follow the same three directives day after day: "Show me the money, show me the money, show me the money!"

Been a Busy Two Weeks!

2007-07-26T19:08:07Z

Not too long ago I learned from my colleges in our Japanese office about things happening around OpenID in Asia. Working with Kentaro Sakamoto-san from VeriSign Japan, I managed to setup a trip coinciding with the ITU-T's Focus Group on Identity Management meeting, to Tokyo and Seoul. Working with Sakamoto-san and Andy Song from AhnLab, who I met at Web 2.0 Expo this year, we managed to setup a great trip where I spent about a week in Tokyo and 22 hours in Seoul. I had a lot of great meetings in Tokyo and in Seoul AhnLab hosted a wonderful half-day OpenID session. Slides from that are up on SlideShare at http://www.slideshare.net/daveman692/open-id-overview-seoul-july-2007 Thanks again to Sakamoto-san, everyone at VeriSign Japan, and Andy for being terrific hosts.

Last Saturday, we completed the upgrade of our Personal Identity Provider. All accounts have been automatically upgraded and the URL is the same at http://pip.verisignlabs.com. We definitely encourage everyone to come try it out as we believe it is the best OpenID Provider in existence! Not only does it have all of the features from the PIP we launched last May, but adds support for OpenID 2.0, the ability to manage multiple identities within one PIP account, integration with strong authentication via our VeriSign Identity Protection network, Information Card support as one way to help protect against phishing attacks, and our SeatBelt Firefox add-on which works with a variety of OpenID Providers.

This week I'm up in Portland OR at O'Reilly's Open Source Convention. Tuesday morning, Simon Willison and I gave a three-hour OpenID Bootcamp tutorial where we dove into many different aspects of OpenID from a basic introduction, to security concerns and solutions, to implementation details. Slides from the tutorial are also up on SlideShare at http://www.slideshare.net/daveman692/openid-bootcamp-tutorial. In the afternoon, Simon and I joined Tim O'Reilly during his Radar Executive Briefing where we gave an update on OpenID and discussed why as he said, "OpenID is taking the world by storm".

Ending the day Tuesday, I was awarded a Google-O'Reilly Open Source award which I posted more about on my personal blog. The award I won was for Best Strategist which refers to the work I've done over this past year at VeriSign within the wider OpenID community. Am certainly really honored to have been recognized, though am guessing I now need to work on raising my hacker geek cred again. :P

Updating the PIP

2007-06-28T04:03:38Z

Today at the Burton Group's Catalyst conference in San Francisco during an interoperability event this evening, we'll be demoing a pre-release of our upcoming update to our Personal Identity Provider. This update touches every aspect of the PIP, providing the foundation for a identity management platform from VeriSign.

Over the next few weeks, leading up to the launch of this update, we'll be looking at the new features one-by-one in a series of blog posts. From a high-level, you can look forward to the following, but overall we've focused this release on security, control, and convenience:

Completely redesigned interface to make the PIP easier to use
Support for OpenID 1.1 and 2.0
Ability to create multiple identities managed from within a single user account
New "tag based" profile data management interface making it easier to view and sort all of your profile data
Ability to download managed Information Cards for each of your created identities to use with technology such as Microsoft's Cardspace
Strong authentication support via second-factor credentials from the VeriSign Identity Protection network, along with the ability to have a one-time PIN sent via SMS or email if you've forgotten your credential
Phishing-resistant logins using both VIP credentials and managed Information Cards
Full activity logging so you can have a complete picture of where you've used your identities
Integration with our own "OpenID SeatBelt" FireFox add-on to provide additional convenience and security protections when using OpenID identities from the PIP, AOL, Xlogon and MyOpenID.com

Check it out, but please realize that any accounts you create will go away in a few weeks when we fully transition the PIP. http://jpip.verisignlabs.com