Ben Gross, PhD

Identity Management - Security - User Experience

Month: August, 2010

No Frills SSL Certificates are Inexpensive and Useful

SSL De Facto for Securing Connections SSL, short for Secure Socket Layer, is a cryptographic protocol for securing network traffic that is the de facto mechanism for securing transactions on the web and many other protocols including email (SMTP/IMAP/POP), IM (Jabber/XMPP), VoIP (SIP), and SSL-based VPNs. The topic of SSL certificates is a bit arcane, [...]

OpenID Trends: Improved Usability and Increased Centralization

The OpenID authentication framework is the most well known of the federated user-centric identity systems. OpenID has effectively become the first commonplace single sign-on option for the Internet at large. Most sizeable Web-based service providers such as AOL, Google, Facebook, Microsoft, MySpace and Yahoo! have integrated at least limited support for OpenID. Services often run [...]

How to Email a Complete Web Page From Any Browser

Email is still one of the most convenient ways to quickly share links to friends and colleagues. Unfortunately, there are two major problems. First many people’s browsers are not configured to work correctly with their email client, especially for webmail. Second, many browsers only support emailing a link to the web page and not the [...]

Federal Digital Identity Proposal Lacking in Usability

The White House announced The National Strategy for Trusted Identities in Cyberspace (NSTIC) proposal and a NSTIC Fact Sheet on The White House blog. The NSTIC proposal (PDF) describes a plan to implement a federated online identity system with strong authentication. The document states the President expects to sign a final version in October 2010 [...]