[LINK] Microsoft tests identity technology in schools

Tom Koltai tomk at unwired.com.au
Fri Apr 24 07:34:38 AEST 2009


An interesing twist on Global unique user ID.
Get the students at schoool and keep their id for life... Wish I'd
thought of it.. 

Sort of like the Commonwealth Bank Bank - give every child a piggy bank
at schoool aand get a client for life.

Anyone want to be that the ID's will be portable through university and
out into the workforce ? 
Read - linked to your ATO TFN.

This one might not have popped up on the EFF screens yet. Mainly because
it LOOKS so innocuous.
Its not.
----------------------------
http://news.cnet.com/8301-1009_3-10223686-83.html

SAN FRANCISCO--Microsoft is testing some of its new identity-based
security technology in Washington state schools, where students and
teachers will be able to securely access grades and class schedules, a
Microsoft executive said in a keynote address Tuesday at the RSA 2009
security conference here. 

The software company is working with the Lake Washington School
District-- comprised of 50 schools and nearly 24,000 students in and
around Microsoft's home town of Redmond--to deploy its Geneva
claims-based identity platform, said Scott Charney, corporate vice
president of Microsoft's Trustworthy Computing Group. 

Students and parents will bring identification information into the
school to prove children's identities, and the students will then get
small notebook PCs with identity information cards on them to be used
for accessing online education materials. 

Microsoft announced the Geneva technology last week
<http://news.cnet.com/8301-1009_3-10220522-83.html>  when it announced
its first hosted security service under the Forefront brand. 

A former leading federal prosecutor for computer crimes at the Justice
Department, Charney left PricewaterhouseCoopers to join Microsoft as
chief security strategist in 2002. 

"Initially my friends laughed because I used 'Microsoft' and 'security'
in the same sentence," he quipped. Microsoft has made progress since
then, he added. 

In addition to improving the security of Windows
<http://news.cnet.com/8301-1009_3-10222698-83.html> , Microsoft offers
SmartScreen technology in Internet Explorer 8
<http://download.cnet.com/Internet-Explorer/3000-2356_4-10013275.html>
that allows users to block malware from being downloaded onto their
computers. The company also shares its Software Development Lifecycle
guidelines and tools <http://news.cnet.com/8301-1009_3-10042248-83.html>
for building secure software with outside developers and firms. 

Current mechanisms used by Web sites to protect consumer data by
requiring people to prove they are authorized to access sites are
broken, Charney said. Web sites ask for personal information, like city
of birth and mother's maiden name, "but those secrets aren't secret at
all," he said. "We need a different model for thinking about identity." 

All of Microsoft's security news is designed to further the company's
mission to provide what it calls "End to End Trust" for people using the
Internet, regardless of what data they are working with, what hardware
they are using, and where they are located. 

Key to the End to End Trust <http://www.microsoft.com/endtoendtrust/>
initiative, which was launched at RSA last year
<http://news.cnet.com/8301-10784_3-9914240-7.html> , features a trusted
stack of components that authenticate everything from the user to the
data and applications. 

In addition to software features for authentication and identity, the
Windows 7 beta <http://news.cnet.com/8301-1009_3-10223548-83.html>
includes support for Trusted Platform Modules that provide encryption at
the hardware level. 

In discussing all the threats and risks Internet users face today,
Charney revealed what he called "Charney's Theorem"--"there's always a
percentage of the population up to no good." 




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