ICF Announces New White Paper by Craig Burton
SPECIAL TO RSA-San Francisco-April 20, 2009-At the RSA Security conference beginning today at the Moscone Center in San Francisco, the Information Card Foundation (ICF) announced publication of a new white paper on Information Cards by noted industry analyst Craig Burton. The Information Card Ecosystem: The Fundamental Leap from Cookies and Passwords to Cards and Selectors explains why the Information Card metaphor is being recognized across the industry as the future of digital identity both in the enterprise and on the Internet.
"This is the first analysis of digital identity that explains why Information Cards are an inevitable next step in the evolution of relationships on the Internet, just as cookies were in the 1990's," said Mr. Burton, principal analyst at Burtonian and former CTO of Novell. "Cookies solved the problem of how a user could share information across the pages of the same website. For example, without them, e-commerce shopping carts would not work. Information Cards solve the next wider problem: how a user can safely share private information across completely different websites of their choosing."
The paper uses the common example of booking travel. Today, a traveller must re-enter their trip details into every travel site they visit. Even though that travel site may set a cookie to recognize the returning user, that's all the cookie can "remember". With Information Cards, the traveller will be able enter the trip details once, then use an Information Card to securely and privately share it with each travel site they wish in one click.
"This represents a major leap in Internet productivity and convenience," said ICF Interim Executive Director Drummond Reed. "Information Cards will make it many times easier for users to perform many routine tasks on the net, especially those that require you to be able to share information about you on one site with another site." He cited examples such as being able to verify your name, email address, postal address, age, employer, credit rating, voter's registraton, or citizenship. He added, "This will open up an entire new marketplace of services on the net."
The white paper also explains the newest development in Information Card technology, so-called "action cards" that safely augment a user's browser experience at websites before the site explicitly supports Information Cards. For example, at the RSA conference today, AAA Northwest and Azigo Corporation will demonstrate the newly announced AAA Discount Reminders action card. "With the AAA card and Azigo, a user will be automatically reminded to user their AAA discount at any website that accepts it," said Jack Connors, President of Azigo. "This can save users hundreds of dollars a year, at no cost to them, and it already works at hundreds of websites today."
The AAA Discount Reminders action card is one of seven featured Information Card projects also being announced by the Information Card Foundation in a separate release today.
The white paper is available at the ICF's new website at www.informationcard.net. This website is being unveiled as part of the Harnessing the Power of Digital Identity workshop the ICF is co-sponsoring with the Liberty Alliance. The presentation will be held at 2:15 p.m. at Esplanades 301&303 ("Purple 301&303") in the Moscone Center.