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IBM Bucks Microsoft’s Infocard
John Stith
Staff Writer
2006-02-27
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IBM announced they are developing an open source initiative they call "Project Higgins" that will compete directly with Microsoft's recently announced Infocard. The purpose is to develop online identity management, giving people more control while protecting the relevant information.
Earlier this month at the RSA Conference in San Jose, Bill Gates gave everyone a gander at the new Infocard developed by Microsoft. The card was developed based upon industry standards put together by Microsoft and IBM. IBM chose to buck the Infocard and is working on an open source version of online identity management.
According to the information from IBM, this "Higgins" was built on a concept by Harvard Law School's Berkman Center for Internet. This is the first project managed by the Eclipse open source foundation and is working on "user-centric" identity management. IBM suggests this is an emerging trend in security software.
What this will do is enable people to actively manage and control their online personal information, including bank account, telephone and credit card number or even medical and employment records. This will take out the middleman so to speak and allow people to manage their own business instead of leaving it in the hands of many different institutions and companies like it is right now.
"To move online security to the next level, there has to be fundamental resolve among consumers, government and business to quickly adopt a system where the individual has more control over how information about them is managed and shared," said John Clippinger, Senior Fellow for The Berkman Center.
"Our aim is to construct an open and widely accessible software framework that puts the individual at the center of the identity management universe. With this framework in place, it will be easier for society to begin the migration to more secure online environments, where trusted networks can not only be easily formed, but effectively enforced. For in the end, security is not just technological, but social."
So IBM, along with Novell and Parity Communications set out to get this going as an open source project. In order to make sure this flies and quickly, these three companies are contributing code to Higgins. IBM also plans to incorporate this product into its own Tivoli identity management software.
Anthony Nadalin, Distinguished Engineer and Chief Security Architect, IBM, added: "Identity management is the next frontier for open source software. Open source ensures that there is easy access to the technology, so that developers can innovate around it. It also means that customers won't be locked into a proprietary architecture when they adopt user-centric identity management systems."
The biggest difference between the two is the Infocard is aimed at individuals and Higgins is aimed more at companies. The way Higgins will work, Infocard would be just another identification format the system will be able to utilize. IBM will add Higgins to its own products in 2007.
The big question some may ask then is how much of this information will be stored. Will Microsoft store all the information centrally with the Infocard? Will IBM's new system store all this information? While both companies will probably say no, other companies like Google have no compunction against storing personal information indefinitely They won't share with people but they certainly use it for their own purposes. Will these companies do that also? Microsoft got grief in the past for such issues. Whose to say it won't happen with IBM and Microsoft both? As identity fraud continues to proliferate, these companies must do more to strengthen confidence in protecting identities.
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About the Author:
John is a staff writer for SecurityProNews covering cyber security.
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