What have I been up to? Well, I’ve been attempting to get a couple of demos together that illustrate functionality related to identity management, in particular. As of now, I’ve been working on two (2):
- OpenID: This demo illustrates a consumer of OpenID capabilities. Technically, OpenID offers a distributed authentication mechanism, meaning you authenticate (i.e., login) to the site that provided you the OpenID identity. The client application (i.e., web site) accepts that OpenID provider authentication as valid; you are then ‘logged in’ to the site using that identity. Conceptually, this could lead to a wide range of practical capabilities – namely, a ubiquitous, federated, single sign on functionality. However, it is too early to tell whether or not this will fly…By the way, this site is OpenID-enabled.
- Digital Signatures: I had a client who wanted to legally enforce a commitment made over the web, and one way to do so is through the use of digital signatures using an X.509 digital certificate. This demo illustrates one way to issue a credential (i.e., digital certificate) to someone – through a registration process – and then use the issued credential to digitally sign a document. (More complexity in the registration process – such as verification of the registrant’s claim of identity or even an in-person identity vetting – increases the trust process and a number of industry standards, such as Signatures and Authentication For Everyone (SAFE), have much more stringent policies related to credential issuance.)
I intend to add more demonstrations in the future. Please visit demos periodically.
Care to comment?