re:ID Podcast

In David Birch’s book “Identity is the New Money,” cash is passé. Regarding ID’s Gina Jordan spoke with Birch, director and global ambassador for Consult Hyperion, about his book which focuses on the technological changes that are merging payments with identity. He argues that social connections and mobile phones can work together to provide private and secure transactions. He finishes the book by calling for a rethinking of identity infrastructure, also known as entitlement infrastructure.

Authentication on mobile devices isn’t easy. Extra hardware or lengthy passwords adds friction to the authentication process and nobody wants to do that. Researchers at Rutgers University found that free form shapes drawn with fingers on the touchscreen are more secure than standard pass codes, and they’re surprisingly easy to remember. Regarding ID’s Gina Jordan spoke with Janne Lindqvist, an assistant professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Rutgers, about the squiggly passwords and their effectiveness.

The Macao Special Administrative Region of the People’s Republic of China has been issuing contact smart cards since 2002. The agency decided to make the switch to contactless this year, says Erik Wellen, general manager at Bell ID for the Middle East. Bell ID’s Identity Token Manager is a system that enables issuers of chip-based identity cards to deploy and manage single and multi-application identity schemes. The card has many applications but one of the main reasons for the move to contactless was automated passenger clearance at the border. Contactless enables quicker throughput and transaction speed and also increases the lifespan of the card since a chip isn’t exposed.

While large-scale password breaches are almost common occurrences these days, the Heartbleed bug caught everybody by surprise. "The Heartbleed breach has demonstrated that everything we thought was secret on the internet is in fact not secret," says Andre Boysen, executive vice president of marketing at SecureKey. "That's really what is interesting is that Heartbleed has lifted the veil on the security model of the internet and there's been a collective gasp of disbelief." Regarding ID's Gina Jordan spoke with Boysen about the bug, it's impact and how it may lead to multi-factor authentication.

A bill banning biometric in Florida school is awaiting Gov. Rick Scott's signature, and he is expected to sign it. Florida legislators weren't willing to speak with Regarding ID's Gina Jordan but audio from State Senate committee hearings described why legislators felt the need to ban the identification technologies instead of providing an opt-out provision. Senator Dorothy Hukill (R - Port Orange) says the bill is intended to protect students from having their identities stolen even though she admits that there is no recorded instance of a biometric database being breached and used to steal an individual's identity.

The idea of issuing smart cards to patients in health care isn’t new but has yet to take off. Federal legislation has been proposed to issue smart cards to all Medicare recipients to reduce fraud. But states are also looking at the technology in order to protect patient privacy and cut down on abuse. New Jersey Assemblyman Tim Eustace – also a chiropractor – has submitted a bill that would issue smart cards to Medicaid recipients in the garden state. Regarding ID’s Gina Jordan spoke to Eustace about the bill and what the system would look like.

Rounding out the last pilot winner for the National Strategy for Trusted Identities in Cyberspace is the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. Regarding ID’s Gina Jordan spoke with Frank Morrow, program manager for identity and access management for the commonwealth, about its plans to use the $1.1 million award to knock down various agency identity silos. “Hopefully we will have our citizens being able to interact with our government in a more seamless manner without all the silos that they currently have to deal with,” Morrow explains. “Within our own government we have a lot of duplicative efforts here – both maintaining all the different systems that track the users, the user populations that are coming to them, as well as validating their identities and making sure we’re dealing with the people they claim to be.”

Exponent is doing something a little different than the other pilot winners for the National Strategy for Trusted Identities in Cyberspace. The company’s pilot has a significant hardware component to its test and will look at using different secure elements in the identity ecosystem. “We will demonstrate two form factors,” says said Brad McGoran, a principal engineer at Exponent. “One will leverage the UICC in a phone, and the other’s going to leverage a secure element that’s embedded in a wearable device, and we’ve called that wearable device a PAD – or a Personal Authentication Device.”

Identity theft is a problem in Michigan and with more application for government services going online; the Department of Human Services wants to make sure identities are accurately vetted. The state was awarded a pilot from the National Strategy for Trusted Identities in Cyberspace that will focus on removing the need for a manual review of applications, giving clients a fast and accurate way to prove their identity. Regarding ID’s Gina Jordan spoke with Dave Akerly, acting director of communications for the agency, about the project.

TSCP was born out of a challenge: the need to securely collaborate with suppliers, teammates and government customers. Since its inception the organization has created rules for issuing and using credentials. The group was awarded one of the latest pilots for the National Strategy for Trusted Identities in Cyberspace. The TSCP pilot will deploy trusted credentials to conduct secure business-to-business, government-to-business and retail transactions for small and medium-sized businesses and financial services companies, including Fidelity Investments and Chicago Mercantile Exchange. Steve Race, vice president of operations for TSCP, filled Regarding ID’s Gina Jordan in on the pilot.