January 14, 2014 – by Peter B. Counter
The United States Federal Government wanted to improve online transactions. Higher security, better convenience and improved privacy are all aspects of everyday networked activity that the authentication industry is still trying to better implement within the equation of sensitive data interactions. In 2011, the White House announced the National Strategy for Trusted Identities in Cyberspace, commonly known as NSTIC in order to cooperate with non-government entities from the public and private sectors with the goal of promoting strong authentication that respects privacy standards.
Yesterday, NSTIC published an article describing a new way of thinking in regards to furthering ideas of trust frameworks and identity ecosystems that the post’s authors Kat Megas and Ken Klingenstein call essential to a “vibrant Identity Ecosystem.” The new paradigm has been proposed by Internet2, who is conducting work under an NSTIC pilot, and it serves to provide a new language for use in the discussions around these essential but elusive topics.
Using one of the primary sciences as inspiration, Internet2 has already proposed a model for the periodic table of trust elements. In the same way that the position of a chemical element’s position on the actual Periodic Table can be read to determine relative mass, veilance and reactivity, Internet2’s chart breaks down aspects of trust to their most basic level and organizes them according to respective subjects and the layers contained within them.
Under this model, adopters will be encouraged to think in terms of trustmark compounds: complementary elements that combine in a stable and useful mater. In the same way that Oxygen and hydrogen can bond to create a water molecule, Internet2 proposes that the elements in its table can be combined to describe trustmarks.
The end result of this kind of structural thinking, essentially defining a way to describe a vast and diverse category of frameworks, is inherent interoperability. With the basic building blocks for trustmark compounds having been given names and defining characteristics, parts of the Identity Ecosystem become comparable on a one-to-one basis, eliminating the collaborative obstacles inherent in situations that lead to someone speaking the phrase: “We don’t have a word for it, but the closest thing we have would be [insert patented term here]”
It is encouraging to see this pilot being undertaken by NSTIC, as it gives not just encouragement for those working within the Identity Ecosystem to think, create and innovate with interoperability in mind, but also the language and tools with which to do so. For more information on Internet2’s NSTIC pilot, as well as a PDF copy of the proposed table, read the cited article at the official website.
Follow Us