New Architectures for Identity Management — Removing Barriers to Adoption∗

In recent years a large number of identity management systems have been proposed. Unfortunately, although these systems offer the possibility of significantly improving user security, they have not been widely adopted, typically because the cost of adoption is too high for the involved parties. In this talk we consider the problem of designing identity management systems which offer security advantages but are yet easy to adopt. This involves designing combinations of security protocols and client machine software architectures that support secure identity management protocols in ways that offer simple and low cost migration paths. We describe a client-based identity management tool we call IDSpace, designed to be easy to adopt, and which provides a single user interface and user experience for user authentication, whilst supporting a range of existing identity management technologies. Operation of IDSpace with certain existing systems is described.