The Top 10 Hot Identity Topics

Publication Date: February 2006

• Click here to download the white paper [148k PDF].
• Click here for information about the Smart Card Alliance Identity Council.

Executive Summary

Our shrinking world forces all of us to be constantly thoughtful of the need to protect our own identity and know with certainty the identities of those with whom we trust our wealth, our privacy, and our security. Protecting one’s identity depends both on personal effort and on the practices, policies, and systems of the organizations to which one entrusts personal information. Individuals must exchange identity information and personal data almost daily with other individuals and with organizations. People constantly risk losing control of identity information and must rely on the entities that share the information to protect it.

With the increasing incidence of identity theft and increasing awareness of both the tangible and intangible costs to society of weak identity systems, individuals and organizations are taking more aggressive steps to secure personal information and to implement identity systems that improve identity verification processes.

To design and implement secure identity systems, organizations must think through the entire identity process and chain of trust. A complete identity solution must include policies, procedures, and practices that implement the desired level of security and that describe how people interact with the identity system. The solution must start with accurate vetting of the individual’s identity and follow with identity verification processes that provide secure, authorized access to identity information. The technology selected is also critical; technology in general, and smart cards and biometrics in particular, are powerful tools that can help achieve overall system goals and enforce adherence to the chosen privacy and security policies.

This white paper was developed by the Smart Card Alliance Identity Council to provide a high-level discussion of the top 10 challenges associated with current identity systems. This paper covers a range of topics and offers perspectives on how the most critical identity issues can be addressed with policy, process, and technology solutions. The topics include the following:

• Defining what information constitutes an identity and how systems should be designed to put individuals in control of their private information.

• Assessing how governments respond to new technologies that can provide solutions to identity challenges.

• Discussing the actions government, businesses, and individuals can take to prevent identity theft and describing the role of technology in preventing theft.

• Analyzing the challenges posed by breeder documents and discussing potential solutions that could lead to more accurate proofing of an individual’s identity.

• Describing both the institutional mechanisms and the individual actions that can keep an individual’s personal identity information private.

• Discussing how a secure identity can be created and used throughout the identity life cycle.

• Defining the different types of identity credentials and offering guidance on key considerations for using a credential for multiple applications.

• Describing how new technologies are being used to verify an individual’s identity in the online world.

• Defining how biometric technology is used in identity systems to bind an individual to an identity credential and verification event.

Secure, trusted identity systems will result only if these policy, process, and technology issues are considered when new systems are being designed. The Identity Council’s goal is to provide guidance on important identity issues, thereby helping policy-makers and implementing organizations understand how smart card and related technologies can best be applied to deliver the benefits of secure identity.

The Identity Council welcomes input from government, businesses, and the public. If you have comments on the identity topics white paper, please email them to identity@smartcardalliance.org.

About the Smart Card Alliance Identity Council

The Identity Council is one of several Smart Card Alliance Technology and Industry Councils, a new type of focused group within the overall structure of the Alliance. These councils have been created to foster increased industry collaboration within a specified industry or market segment and produce tangible results while raising public awareness to the value of smart card technology.

The Identity Council is focused on promoting the need for technologies, legislation and usage solutions regarding human identity information to address the challenges of securing identity information, reducing identity fraud and increasing the usefulness that secure identity information delivers. The Council engages a broad set of participants and takes an industry perspective, bringing careful thought, joint planning and multiple organization resources to bear on addressing the challenges of securing identity information for proper use. The Council is currently working on projects to raise awareness of the issues that organizations and the public face in implementing and using identity systems and to promote the use of the appropriate technologies to solve these issues.