We recently gathered with representatives from eight of our top customers across government and commercial organizations. We spent the day discussing the direction of identity assurance in currently developing federal standards and in practice at their various agencies and companies. We discussed additional business goals that they could accomplish with greater trust in their users' identities, particularly if attributes like professional certifications are attached to the identity. The executives we talked to are looking for trusted identities that can be shared with business partners or across an industry. They are looking for dynamic identity proofing that is immediately available with both on-premise and cloud-based solutions.

One specific issue highlighted was the establishment of trust between the credentialing provider and the relying party. As we discussed last year, members in a federated identity framework should always insist that the authenticating organization/credential provider have strong identity proofing and strong authentication. If a fraudster gets in through the front door because weak credentials were compromised, no amount of encryption and anonymization on the back end will prevent that fraudulent user, pretending to be a legitimate user, from accessing the information within the Federated systems.

Further discussion centered around the best ways to ensure strong identity proofing and strong authentication. To join those discussions, register for our summer webinar series on cloud-based identity and strong authentication.