Uncovering Problems

05 Feb 2006

Just now I'm finishing my contribution to this year's InfoSeCon conference. As I've done some final (re)touching of the paper, a sudden realization struck me.

The identity technologies uncover all kinds of underlying problems. Many old problems are being uncovered, the problems that are here since the very beginning and nobody have the will strong enough to solve them.

The danger of global identifiers, the workstation insecurity, the weakness of "strong" authentication, the digital signature disaster-in-waiting, the enterprise organizational structure, workflow and roles problems, none of these is "native" identity problem. They are more like a legacy, old problems left unsolved for too long.

Maybe the whole identity hype is all about this. Solving old problems.