PicketLink 1.0.3.final Released

With great pleasure, I announce the availability of PicketLink v1.0.3.final.

More information can be had from this article. (<== HERE)

Some of the new features included:

• The STS has failover capabilities in the client code.
• The STS stores the canceled ids in a database (useful in a clustered environment).
• Password masking capabilities for the configuration files.

Bug fixes: the regular lot. :)

Visit the project page at: Project PicketLink.

US Public Sector Cloud Computing

Last week, I had the privilege of listening to a presentation by Vivek Kundra, US Federal CIO at the US Department of Commerce in Washington DC. I was attending the NIST Cloud Workshop and Forum.

Vivek talked about how the US government tech was 10 years behind the curve and his initial days as the CIO. He basically called for action from NIST and the community to define standards for cloud computing to increase the adoption.

His presentation is available as a CIO report at State of Public Sector Cloud Computing.

The foremost requirement for cloud adoption aired at the workshop was "security". No surprises there.

During the 12+ months reign as the CIO, Vivek has done two things:
a) Jumpstarted Cloud Computing as a paradigm for the government sector. This in turn has energized cloud computing adoption.
b) Placed the emphasis on Identity Management which rejuvenated the ailing OpenId community. (Yeah, the regular LOA1 type work).

I did not have the privilege of meeting Vivek in person.

Is Facebook - example of IDM in the Cloud?

I remember Giles Hogben of ENISA (during his keynote presentation at the Oasis Security Forum in London in 2008) declaring social networks to be Identity Management systems. Look at slide 9.

Given this, since facebook is the most popular social networking site in the world with about 400 million registered users and it provides a platform for applications to be hosted, I wonder whether Facebook is a good example of Identity Management in the cloud?

"It's like the 'Hotel California,' " said Nipon Das, 34, a director at a biotechnology consulting firm in New York who tried, unsuccessfully, to delete his account this fall. "You can check out any time you like, but you can never leave."

With the latest controversy with Facebook where users are opted into sharing information with partner sites, we clearly  have an example of "identity federation" with attribute sharing. :)

What do you think?