US government planning identity management system by 2016
Keystone, Colorado The US government is planning to support a selection of identity management systems by 2016 to allow state and private business to get the full benefit from e-commerce.
The National Strategy for Trusted Identities in Cyberspace (NSTIC) will see a variety of vendors offering accredited identity management services, with 1 January 2016 as the nominal start date. However Jeremy Grant, senior executive advisor at National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) told delegates at the Cloud Identity Summit 2011 that the plan was hopefully going to start a lot sooner and pilot programs should begin next year. "User names and passwords are fundamentally broken," he said. "Under this plan people can choose from multiple identity management solutions to get digital credentials anywhere at any time."
He cited recent data from the US Department of Defense, after the agency abandoned user names and passwords in favour of a hardware token to sign onto the network. Intrusions dropped 46 per cent within days he said, proving the efficacy of the system. However, the government will not be specifying such systems he said - since most likely the result would be an outdated system built around old technology. Instead it was looking to the private sector to come up with solutions, both in the US and abroad.
The use of such systems could bring enormous savings he said. Shifting healthcare records into an electronic format could save billions, but progress was stalled because of the lack of proper identity management systems. "The federal government is really getting behind identity," Roger Oberg, vice president of marketing for identity management firm Ping Identity, told V3.co.uk. "The NISTIC project is a really interesting initiative coming out of the White House. It's part of the administration's efforts to drive standards and could see major results."
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