Mike Davies: Online Identity and Trust in EMEA

My wife is Swedish and we live happily together in England. She does love England but every now and then she points out little things in our daily life where things are better in Sweden. It is probably a long term subliminal campaign for her to persuade me to move to Sweden but it will never work, too far to travel back for Spurs home games!

Anyway, the other day she pointed out that the Swedes have had 2 factor authentication for their online banking sites for about 10 years. Her bank gave her a calculator sized device smaller than a PINSentry or NatWest Card reader, which she is happy to use.

Whilst I have already blogged that I don't fully buy into the Barclays PINSentry or NatWest Card Reader implementation (too bulky and only usable at the bank that gave you it) or this particular device as (for the same reasons), I must say that Sweden did the right thing at the time.

I do think that it is time for banks in Sweden and elsewhere to consider more user friendly consumer security devices like the credit card device (see post below) or a security device in the consumers mobile phone.

By the way, apparently Sweden has better hospitals, better sports facilities, better maternity rights (18 months split between the mother and father as you see fit at 90% pay!!!), more Olympic medallists per capita, lower cost of living, healthier food, better designers, closer family units, more beautiful countryside and no Page 3 in newspapers (sorry you will only get the last one if you English)!

Posted by Mike Davies at 04:57 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

(This post shows a picture of one of our products but still reflects my opinion rather than that of my company).

First off, want to congratulate Barclays and Natwest for introducing more security for their consumers.

The Barclays PINSentry device and the NatWest Card Reader have been shipped to over 1 million UK consumers.

I think the adoption of two factor authentication in the UK is a real step forwards to making consumers feel more secure when they online bank. It follows moves in other countries around Europe which have had a positive effect on reducing fraud.

(And here is the "but" you were probably waiting for....)

But....I can't say I like the implementation for the following reasons;

1) The card reader is bulky. I can't see many people wanting to carry it around during their work / personal life. (There are a number of sites where consumers are complaining about this, just Google "PINsentry")

2) The implementation only allows consumers to protect their online bank account. What about other online sites? Are consumers expected to carry around a token for every site they want to protect online? Will they end up with 7 or 8 tokens for each of their online relationships they value?

The debate goes back to a previous post I made about usability vs cost vs security. The card readers that have been implemented, I would humbly suggest, are security solutions which are not user friendly and as such some customers will continue to rebel against them.

I think we will see more and more consumer authentication implementations but they must be able to be shared across all aspects of a consumer's online life and be in a format that is acceptable to consumers.

I believe we will start to see banks and other organisations giving out more appropriate security devices like this one over time:

Posted by Mike Davies at 04:34 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

When I started out this blog I promised to mention if any posts have a VeriSign bias, this one mentions our technology (and the open standards they are based on) but still reflects my opinion rather than that of my company.

What is a federated consumer online Identity?
The general idea is that a consumer would have the ability to log on to one site and then automatically be able to log on to the different site with the same credentials (i.e. his or her identity would be transferable across multiple sites without the need to prove who that person was all over again). This of course makes the whole online commerce experience much easier and safer for the consumer and reduces the fraud that online companies experience.

Why don't we have it now?
I was involved in consumer authentication as far back as 1999. We were going to change the world with "federated consumer online identities" based on Public Key Infrastructure (PKI) technology. We didn't.

The reasons that my organisation at the time, and others since, failed are multiple but the major reason I think is something called Identity Proofing.

Identity proofing
Identity proofing refers to the process for deciding that the person who wants to start an online account at a site is really who they say they are. Think about an online book reseller such as Amazon. They "ID proof" a consumer by asking for valid credit card details with accompanying address data. That is fine for Amazon, but if that consumer then wanted to apply for a loan at an online bank they had no previous relationship with, the details provided to Amazon would not be enough for that bank to approve the loan.

In other words the ID proofing needed for consumers at different sites varies. And ID proofing is expensive / time consuming. Imagine buying that book at Amazon, would you want to have to go through the same process that you did for an online loan to buy a book?

What isn't different at the online book reseller and the online bank is the way that account is accessed after the account has been set up. Usually a username and password, sometimes referred to as a 1st factor of authentication.

At sites such as online banking companies, the consumer might also be asked for second factor of authentication such as a password which can only be used once generated from a token (i.e. PinSentry from Barclays in UK) or a password from a number grid (i.e. TAN system in Germany).

This second factor adds another layer of security which makes it very hard for a consumer to have his or her account taken over by a fraudster through techniques like "Phishing".

As the banks around the world have started to introduce second factor authentication the fraudsters have started to move towards other easier phishing targets like national tax revenue agencies, online gaming / gambling and even motorists associations!

This trend will continue as fraudsters go for the sites with the weakest security.

So given that, I think it is fair to say that almost any online site where there is a value to the fraudster in gaining access to an account will start to experience phishing.

This means that although the ID proofing element on each site may be different, the authentication methods used to access that account are starting to be a shared problem.

Now when we take ID proofing out of a federated online identity, we can start to see that the remaining authentication elements can actually be "federated".

Look at Open ID. This federates the first factor of authentication (user name and password) across any site a consumer interacts with.

Look at OATH (openauthentication.org) which federates the second factor of authentication across any site a consumer interacts with.

I usually sum the situation up in the following picture:

I don't believe we will see a federated consumer online identity anytime in the near future, but like any problem, by breaking it down into smaller chunks we can start to see some major progress towards our goal of making it easy for a consumer to have secure online relationships which are easy for them to manage.

Posted by Mike Davies at 09:28 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I am over here in (currently) sunny San Francisco for the RSA Security show and the first thing I read in my inbox this morning is that HSBC have lost 370k customer records.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/7334249.stm

When you read the article it becomes clear that the data lost is not that significant and (as with the HMRC lost CDs) probably has not got in the hands of Fraudsters. It is also very clear that the loss has nothing to do with peoples online accounts.

But all the general public reads is "HSBC loses customers' data disc", and that again adds fuel to the fire for those consumers that don't want to do banking online.

Consumer online trust is being eroded by any adverse news such as this, unfortunately I am guessing that this is a topic that I will be coming back to again and again on this blog.

RSA really kicks off properly tomorrow, and I hope to post a couple of times this week on anything new that catches my eye.

Posted by Mike Davies at 05:10 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

About a year ago we coined this term and have only really been using it internally within VeriSign, but let me tell you a bit about Phoraging.

Our definition:
"Taking data from many different online sources to build up the identity of a consumer to commit identity theft".

You can compare it to someone in the real world going through your garbage to find banks statements and the like (called Dumpster Diving in the US).

It has been becoming more and more relevant as social networking sites have exploded and internally, we use this slide picture to highlight it:

To explain:

Anything to the left of the "Privacy line" - Things that you post on public sites that you are happy to share with anyone. The problem that sites like Facebook give us is that the privacy line (i.e. things that you are happy to share with people) is moving to the right.

Anything to the right of the privacy line and left of the security line - Things you might share when you register for an event or ask for a brochure from a web site. If a fraudster has a key logger on your machine or has set up a fake site to capture these details can get even more data on you.

Anything to the right of the Security line - things that you would be unwilling to share with anyone.

What the diagram shows is that as the "Phorager" builds up more information about you he or she is more able to get past the "Security Line" potentially stealing your identity.

Started as a bit of fun bit of fun really, but I did notice that there are now three pages of sites if you Google "Phoraging" :-)

Posted by Mike Davies at 09:22 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

This article makes the case for Open ID without even mentioning it. The journo is having a valid moan about the proliferation of passwords in her life and talks though a number of tools and policies she uses to protect them.

A great example of a "consumer's view" of the problem, and should help the techie community take a step back to understand the real problems consumer face.

Of course what we know, and she doesn't, is that if she had an Open ID (and it was widely accepted), problem would be solved!

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB120587753685946459.html?mod=googlenews_wsj

Posted by Mike Davies at 10:51 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I must recommend a book. But as I do I feel like I am recommending a course of medication which will make you feel queasy first but will ultimately be worth it.

In other word's it's not an easy read.

Sure there are enough amusing stories to keep you involved, but at times it goes a bit heavy on the statistics and technicalities of his argument. If I was being over critical I would also say the author uses it as a platform to have a pop at some of his critics.

But given the above caveat I would strongly recommend "the Black Swan" by Nassim Nicholas Taleb.

Someone sent me a Haiku (a minimalist form Japanese poetry) the other day, and after a couple of glasses of wine on a flight I thought I would sum up the book in Haiku form, it seemed to work at 30,000ft:

Our world is random
Expect and prepare for change
But do not predict

A Black Swan, as Taleb defines it s a large-impact, hard-to-predict, and rare event beyond the realm of normal expectations which has a major effect on things we do.

Here is some more info from Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_swan_theory

Some general examples:
- The birth and growth of the internet
- September 11th 2001
- 1995 Kyoto earthquake in Japan (knocked out 1/3 of Japan's export capacity)

So what has this to do with Consumer Authentication and trust on the internet? Well it might help if I outline a few examples which I would class as Black Swans that are relevant:

- HMRC data breach in UK (25 million consumer records missing)
- T. J. Maxx in US (having 46 million credit card records stolen)
- Estonia's internet sites overwhelmed in cyber terrorist attacks

Why are these Black Swans in our world? Well firstly, no-one saw them coming.

Secondly they had a profound and deep affect on consumer trust on the internet.

I don't think anyone could have predicted any one of those particular "Black Swans" but I am pretty sure I can make a prediction which will hold up over time (and I do so without contradicting the Black swan theory).

"I predict that before the end of 2008 there will be a similar size to the aforementioned "scandal" that is related to Identity, trust or consumer authentication within Europe."

Doesn't take a rocket scientist to make that kind of prediction, but what I am trying to say is that as these rare but ultimately game changing events come about in the online world, consumer trust will continue to be eroded.

I am not a doomsayer, I don't believe that the online commerce world is broken, I just think that as more and more of these things happen many consumers will shy away from using the internet to it's maximum potential.

We should be preparing for Black Swann's in our own little world of online consumer authentication as each time an event comes along, consumers leave the building.

But as I say, read the book!

Posted by Mike Davies at 09:15 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)