Sun shines on circle of trust

By Rodney Appleyard

Constant threat of fraud and identity theft has given organisations the jitters around the world, so more businesses are turning to authentication processes all of the time to help overcome these insecurities.

Being one of the founding members of the Liberty Alliance - a consortium of IT companies which aims to develop security standards for managing user authentication services on behalf of online businesses - Sun Microsystems is making sure that identity management is an integral part of its top priorities.

Laurie Wong, Sun's software business manager for ANZ, compared Sun's vision of identity authentication to the current circle experienced by people who lose their wallets in the modern world.

"If you lose your wallet, so long as you have a driving licence and passport tucked away somewhere safe, you can take this to American Express as proof of identity which will mean that they will re-issue you with a new credit card. This is because there is a circle of trust between immigration, American Express and the RTA.

"They do not look into your driving licence or passport further, because they trust that it is authentic if it has been provided by the relevant authorities. So this is what we are bringing into the world of the Internet too. By providing a circle of trust between organisations, a user will only have to log-on one, and then will have access to all of the other sites who are part of the circle of trust."

This means of course that the user will no longer have to log on to multiple different sites because of the identity bridge provided by Sun.

Sun believes that more organisations than ever are voicing a need to take on board this kind of identity authentication to safeguard them from the penalties of new regulations, such as Sarbanes Oxley, which require them to have records of every transaction.

By creating a more secure environment, using passwords and usernames to access accounting transactions, for example, this will help organisations to limit the chance of illegal transactions and keep on records genuine actions.

Sun is ready to plough even more resources into providing a more secure environment that can protect organisations from fraud.

Related Article:

IBM joins Liberty, is Microsoft to follow?