Fox News
The Commerce Dept. unveiled a plan Friday to create a national cyber-identity system that would give consumers who opt in a single secure password and identity for all their digital transactions.
The National Strategy for Trusted Identities in Cyberspace (NSTIC) will be a voluntary system designed to protect consumers from online fraud and identity theft -- which hit 8.1 million people last year, at a total cost of $27 billion. The problem: The current system of half-remembered passwords jotted down on post-it notes and based on pets and maiden names simply isn't good enough.
"Passwords just won't cut it here," said Commerce Secretary Gary Locke, who announced the initiative at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. “We must do more to help consumers protect themselves, and we must make it more convenient than remembering dozens of passwords,” he said.
The "identity ecosystem" will create secure online IDs for Americans who elect to join the program, giving them a single credential -- such as a unique piece of software on a smart phone, a smart card, or a token that generates a one-time digital password -- which they can use to log on to a variety of websites.
Instead of having to remember all those disparate passwords, one for each site that conducts a secure transaction, a consumer would use that single credential to log in, with far more security than a password alone would provide, the agency said...[Full Article]
Obama moves forward with Internet ID plan
CNet
The Obama administration said today that it's moving ahead with a plan for broad adoption of Internet IDs despite concerns about identity centralization, and hopes to fund pilot projects next year.
At an event hosted by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce in Washington, D.C., administration officials downplayed privacy and civil liberties concerns about their proposal, which they said would be led by the private sector and not be required for Americans who use the Internet.
There's "no reliable way to verify identity online" at the moment, Commerce Secretary Gary Locke said, citing the rising tide of security threats including malware and identity theft that have grown increasingly prevalent over the last few years. "Passwords just won't cut it here."
A 55-page document (PDF) released by the White House today adds a few more details to the proposal, which still remains mostly hazy and inchoate.
It offers examples of what the White House views as an "identity ecosystem," including obtaining a digital ID from an Internet service provider that could be used to view your personal health information, or obtaining an ID linked to your cell phone that would let you log into IRS.gov to view payments and file taxes. The idea is to have multiple identity providers that are part of the same system...[Full Article]
Download the report...
National Strategy for Trusted Identities in Cyberspace
