Back when DARPA and universities were the only hosts, it didn't matter. As the internet grew into a public medium, and as WWW and HTML came into the act, it became more difficult to handle such issues as security. In the corporate world, there were proprietary devices that prevented unauthorized access without proper credentials. And as formidable as the task may seem today, I feel that it is not insurmountable nor as costly in time or financial investment.

 The proliferation of cybercrimes stems from security issues in the code of th eindividual servers and clients. That is why companies like Symantec exist. Prior to Web and html browser, most viruses were passed on floppies.

 Today we have broadband access at speeds that can handle streaming video, so the barriers to strong encryption and authorization identity is a matter of software and not infrastructure. And using an older concept, tunneling protocols that imbed sensitive data within an innocuous stream of not so sensitive traffic. Extremely strong encryption algorithms and fingerprint identification can make authorization validation simple and while anonymity is still maintained.

 

Indeed security was not given a high priority in the design of DARPA Internet protocol (The design philosophy of the DARPA internet protocols ). 

This has resulted in some sort of "patching" to secure the internet. With the businesses of  virtual worlds like second life and social networks like facebook on the rise there is indeed a need for Identity enabled Internet. But the million dollars question is how to create it.

 

Many of the online businesses want as many subscribers as possible with little identification mechanisms and many of the users would not like to upload some thing like copies of their id cards etc whenever they are registering on the Internet. Phishing  attacks would make things more complex. Some articles posted in response to this article have identified to tackle this problem but I would like to see  what the world leaders in Internet and Computer Security like Symantec have got to say on it.

 

Although identity enabled Internet may be the need of the hour but I do not see it there in immediate future

Hi Mark,

It's great reading your take on the issue of ceating an identuty layer for the internet. Others like secondLife are also calling for the same and it's makes it very interesting to know that a company like SeconLife which thrives on anonymity is calling for this:

Second Life screams for an Internet Identity Layer

 

But my concern though is how effective will such an Identity Layer be? Will this identity layer not be vulnerable to breaches of security? With the rampant breaches of security on the internet, what guaranatee do we have of how secured this identity layer will be?

 

Creating an identity layer with directory virtualization

 

 

Given Mark's post, and increasing openness (e.g.), perhaps it is possible in a progressively evolving identity-enabled Internet that increasingly, positive forces will join together. Perhaps it is possible this will include Symantec being listed as a Corporate Board Member here.