I hope everyone's going to Digital ID World (DIDW) next week. We'll start on Monday with an Identity Open Space Unconference (don't worry, Virgos, they're unstructured, but not without shape and self-revealing purpose). Once this gives rise to the main event, there are a number of sessions that look fascinating for identity afficionados – like “What Do the Internet's Largest Sites Think About Identity?”, a panel moderated by Dan Farber and featuring representatives of the large sites and a new presentation by Dick Hardt. There will also be an OSIS meeting – and of course, the endless hallway conversation.
I'm pairing up with Patrick Harding (from Ping Identity) on a Wednesday session called “Understanding InfoCards in an Enterprise Setting“. It will include a demo that I think will really help show the concrete benefits of InfoCards inside the enterprise. What can you expect?
First, you'll see the latest version of Ping's InfoCard server, now featuring both Managed IdP as well as Service Provider capabilities. Ping's goal is to show how to seamlessly chain passive and active federation – allowing for on-the-fly privacy context switching. They'll use real-world use-cases where passive federation gives way to active and vice-versa.
According to Andre Durand, Ping Identity's CEO:
“The Digital ID World demo will show two scenarios to depict how passive federation (via SAML 2.0 Web SSO Profiles or WS-Federation) and active federation (via CardSpace) can both play a role in enabling a seamless user experience for accessing outsourced applications. The plan is to demonstrate how passive and active federation work together to enable a myriad of different business use cases when chained together in different situations
“Scenario 1:
“An enterprise employee leverages her internal employee portal to access applications that are hosted externally. In the first case we show how SAML 2.0 Web SSO (passive federation) is used to enable seamless access into the SF.com web site. The user accepts this as part of her employment contract – the employer has deemed that the use of SF.com is critical to their business and they want no friction for their sales force in entering information for forecasting purposes.
“In the second case we'll show how CardSpace is used to ‘optionally’ enable seamless access into the employees Employee Benefits web site. As the Employee Benefits web site is made up of a mixture of personal and corporate information (i.e. 401k, health and payroll) the employee is given the choice of whether to enable SSO via the use of CardSpace. The Employee Benefits web site is enabled with CardSpace. After the user clicks on the ‘Benefits’ link in their corporate portal, she is prompted with different Cards (Employer and Benefits) which she can then choose between for accessing the Benefits web site. If she chooses ‘Employer’ then she will be enabled with SSO from the Corporate Portal in future interactions.”
By the way, Andre, please tell me there's some way for her to change her mind later!
“Scenario 2:
“An enterprise employee is traveling and loses her cell phone. She uses her laptop to access her corporate cell phone provider in an effort to have the phone replaced immediately. The employee would normally access this web site via SSO from her corporate portal. The cell phone provider web site is enabled with Card Space to simplify the IdP discovery and selection process. The employee is prompted to use her Employer card to authenticate to her employer's authentication service. The cell phone provider web site leverages CardSpace to handle IdP Selection rather than having to discover this themselves. Once the user has authenticated to her employer the returned security token contains the relevant information to service the employee's request for a new cell phone.”
It all sounds very interesting – amongst the first examples of what it means to have a full palette of identity options. Ping is emblematic of an emerging ecology – many of us, across the industry, moving us towards the Identity Big Bang.
Doc Searls will be doing the closing Keynote. I'm really looking forward to that and to seeing you in Santa Clara.
