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Identity

Advance Australia meh...

Gregor's picture

Gregor Stronach tears the Australian National Anthem apart.  

It was sometime in the 1870s that a Scottish bloke by the name of Peter McCormick thought it would be a grand idea to write a song about how utterly brilliant Australia is. In the 1970s, the Australian Labor Party decided that the country needed a new national anthem. A plebiscite was held - and the 100-year-old ditty was chosen by the people of Australia, edging out Waltzing Matilda - a quaint song about a suicidal sheep rustler. The nation had spoken.

But let's examine what else the nation thought was a good idea in the 1970s. We, as a country, were laughing at racist comedies like Kingswood Country, our love affair with the gas-guzzling family V8 was just hitting its straps and we had managed to elect a leader who, in any other era, would have had the political appeal of a severed thumb.

That's how, with the nation's cultural defences at an all-time low, we managed to choose a national anthem so prodigiously woeful, it took eleven whole years for it to become the 'official' anthem.

A shift in thinking

Julie Inman-GrantBy Julie Inman-Grant

While we all have our own safety guidance, coming together to consolidate these messages and working across sectors is critical to making impact with consumers.

What's the first thing you do when you leave you house? If you're like me, and most people I assume you check that you've got your keys and turn around and lock the door. It's such a simple, and probably entirely automatic act, but it's a crucial step in protecting your home and family from invasion and theft.

But what do you do when you get up and leave your computer? Do you have a lock in place, do you have protection against viruses, and do you let people you don't know into your life, sharing with them private information?  What we're essentially talking about is "physical security" and therefore we must secure our computers with technology in the same way we secure the doors to our homes.

Identity Management in New Zealand, CeBIT Australia and the Merry Month of May ...

Malcolm Crompton's picture

In the world of information governance and a fair go for the individual in dealings with business and government, how has it felt this month?  

Weatherwise, for the folk in northern temperate climates, May is the time that the summer clothing begins to break out, people begin to smile and in England, the challenge of scoring 1000 runs in May is in the air.  Here in the southern temperate climes that I mostly inhabit we are moving solidly into winter.

In the world of information governance and a fair go for the individual in dealings with business and government, how has it felt this month?  Does it feel like we are North of the Equator or South?

It seems to have been a mixed bag.

The month was heralded by the Managing Identity in New Zealand conference which you can now see in full on video and included the eGov forum in Sydney.

But there was also chilly weather ...

If you wouldn’t do it in the real world – don’t do it online

Craig Scroggie

We're putting ourselves in harm's way, according to the latest research from Symantec.

Sure, social networking is fun, catching up with old school friends, flashing through their photos, seeing how their lives have developed, it's a really neat way to keep in contact with people. But it's also a great way to provide fraudsters with a wealth of information that can then be used to access your existing bank accounts, or even create new ones.

The Symantec Internet Security Threat Report reviews known vulnerabilities, analyses network-based attacks, and tracks the occurrence of malicious code based on intelligence data gathered from two million decoy email accounts in 30 different countries, as well as 40,000 sensors spread over 180 countries. To create the report Symantec also draws malicious code reports from over 120 million client, server, and gateway systems that have deployed its antivirus product.

And our latest findings were concerning for Internet users placing personal information on trusted websites such as on social networking sites.

Plurality of Identities, and trouble ahead with biometrics

StephenWilson's picture

The idea of biometric authentication plays straight into the view that each user has one "true" identity underpinning multiple authorisations.  

 I recently noted in the thread on identities and keys that: [We need] identity frameworks (like the Microsoft developed Identity Metasystem aka Cardspace) that permit as many "identities" as there are contexts in which we assert ourselves.

We are in the midst (I hope!) of a shift to a new paradigm based on a plurality of identities. And I think I'm using the over-wrought "p word" here in its proper context. The current "singular identity" paradigm has had a deep and unhelpful influence over the way we think about all sorts of things, including smartcards, PKI, biometrics, the semantic debate over "authentication" versus "authorisation", and therefore the underlying architecture of many approaches to federation.

When does a key become an identifier?

StephenWilson's picture

Should we re-visit the intuition that identities can be federated?  Do we really know what it means to "add up" a bank card and a Medicare card?  Do we have the mathematics to do such a thing with rigor, asks Stephen Wilson.

I wonder ...

Is a passport an "identifier"?
Is a drivers licence an identifier?
Is a credit card an identifier?
Is a professional membership card an identifier?
Is a building access card an identifier?
Is a house key an identifier?
Is a car key an identifier?

Or putting the questions another way ...