* Highlights to the upcoming European Identity Conference
Last issue I talked about the Blues Cruise and how it was a good real world illustration of identity issues. While on the cruise we stopped at Roadtown on Tortola in the British West Indies (BWI). And while there I stopped into Pusser’s bar for a “painkiller” (worked real good!). And, oddly enough, it reminded me of an upcoming event that should interest you.
Pusser’s is owned by the Pusser’s Rum folks and they have bars/pubs all over Tortola and the BWI. But there’s also one in Florida, one in Maryland, one in Gibraltar – and one in Munich, Germany! It’s a watering hole I’m going to visit this coming May when I’m speaking at the European Identity Conference (EIC) in that fair city.
Besides delivering a keynote address, I’ll also be hosting three panels. And, while the lineup for the panels isn’t set yet, I guarantee they’ll be at least as lively and informative as the ones we did last year.
The panels are:
• Beyond passwords: Tokens, biometrics and other authentication factors – Passwords may not be dead, but most people would like to kill them off. Unless they’re used in conjunction with other authentication factors. This session will discuss some of the other factors that are available, how they can work together and what advantages (and disadvantages) they have.
• Seeing the big picture: Context-based authentication – Also sometimes called “risk-based authorization,” this involves gathering as much information as possible about the context of the authentication event (or “ceremony”), then evaluating the probability that this is the correct user and assigning a risk factor to judge the amount of authorization the user should have.
• Take a card: Information Cards as enterprise authenticators – Information cards are beginning to show up in lots of social and consumer transactions, but their biggest success might be in an area that’s barely been mentioned, the enterprise desktop. We’ll explore the what, how and why of information cards in a business setting.
After last year’s EIC I wrote: “As a show, the European Identity Conference fits somewhere between a vendor show (such as Netpro’s Directory Experts Conference or Courion’s Converge) and the larger, consultants’ show (such as the Burton Group’s Catalyst or Gartner’s ID Summit). There’s a very good mix of vendor and customer presentations along with analyst sessions attempting to explain it all. The venue, the Deutsches Museum in Munich (known as “The Smithsonian of Germany”) was also a real treat. It was the first time I’ve done a presentation from the stage of an Imax theater, to people in very comfortable seats. I worried that the seats might be too comfortable, but everyone seemed to stay awake.” I expect this year’s to be even better. Click here for details and registration. And join me at Pusser’s, in Munich, for a round of Painkillers!
