Getting warm on Attributes
On one of the IDAM industry mail lists recently, a contributer noted in passing that: "I replaced 'identity' throughout the document with 'attribute' and barring a few grammar issues everything still...
View ArticleWho buys Bitcoin for Identity?
You'll have to forgive the deliberate inaccuracy in the title, but I just couldn't resist the wordplay. The topic of this blog is the use of the blockchain for identity, which is not exactly Bitcoin....
View ArticleMy opening remarks on privacy at Constellation Connected Enterprise 2015
A big part of my research agenda in the Digital Safety theme at Constellation is privacy. And what a vexed topic it is! It's hard to even know how to talk about privacy. For many years, folks have...
View ArticleSatya Nadella at the security poker table
This morning Microsoft's CEO Satya Nadella gave a global speech about enterprise security. He announced a new Cyber Defense Operations Center, a should-not-be-new Microsoft Enterprise Cybersecurity...
View ArticleThe Economist's take on blockchain
An unpublished letter to the editor of The Economist. November 1, 2015 Just as generalists mesmerized by quantum physics are prone to misapply it to broader but unrelated problems, some are making...
View ArticleA brush with fame (not)
Wired thinks it has unmasked Bitcoin inventor Satoshi Nakamoto as an Australian security personality Craig Wright. Plenty of others beg to differ. Curiously, I had an ugly argument with Wright and a...
View ArticleWeak links in the Blockchain
One of the silliest things I've read yet about blockchain came out in Business Insider Australia last week. They said that the blockchain "in effect"lets the crowd police the monetary system. In the...
View ArticleFinding friends gets a little harder
The highest court in Germany has ruled that Facebook's "Find Friends" function is unlawful there. The decision is the culmination of legal action started in 2010 by German consumer groups, and...
View ArticleThe Privacy Shield - another blunt weapon
For many years, American businesses have enjoyed a bit of special treatment under European data privacy laws. The so-called "Safe Harbor" arrangement was negotiated by the Federal Communications...
View ArticleThe last thing privacy needs is new laws
World Wide Web inventor Sir Tim Berners-Lee has given a speech in London, re-affirming the importance of privacy, but unfortunately he has muddied the waters by casting aspersions on privacy law....
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Card Not Present Fraud up another 25% YOY
The Australian Payments Clearing Association (APCA) releases card fraud statistics every six months for the preceding 12m period. For a decade now, Lockstep has been monitoring these figures, plotting...
View ArticleUniquely difficult
I was talking with government identity strategists earlier this week. We were circling (yet again) definitions of identity and attributes, and revisiting the reasonable idea that digital identities...
View ArticleWhat is it about blockchain?
Almost everything you read about the blockchain is wrong. No new technology since the Internet itself has excited so many pundits, but blockchain just doesn't do what most people seem to think it...
View ArticlePersonal Information: What's it all 'about'?
For the past few years, a crucial case has been playing out in Australia's legal system over the treatment of metadata in privacy law. The next stanza is due to be written soon in the Federal Court....
View ArticleMobility and the experience of identity
We all know that digital transformation is imminent, but getting there is far from easy. The digital journey is fraught with challenges, not least of which is customer access. "Online" is not what it...
View ArticleIt takes a Virtual Village
In "We are hopelessly hooked" (New York Review of Books, February 25), political historian Jacob Weisberg canvasses the social impact of digital technology. He describes mobile and social media as...
View ArticleOrder emerging from the Blockchain storm
I've been a critic of Blockchain. Frankly I've never seen such a massed rush of blood to the head for a new technology. Breathless books are being churned out about "trust infrastructure" and an...
View ArticleBitcoin's fragile power: It's meaningless
What do land titles, marriage certificates, diamonds, ballots, aircraft parts and medical records have in common? They are all apparently able to be managed "on the blockchain". But enough with the...
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Blockchain, Healthcare and the Bleeding Edge of R&D
Last month, over September 26-27, I attended a US government workshop on The Use of Blockchain in Healthcare and Research, organised by the Department of Health & Human Services Office of the...
View ArticleA critique of Privacy by Design
Or Reorientating how engineers think about privacy. From my chapter Blending the practices of Privacy and Information Security to navigate Contemporary Data Protection Challenges in "Trans-Atlantic...
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