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Subject: RE: [pki-tc] PKI Hurdles. Re: [pki-tc] Meeting tomorrow


I likely won't make tomorrow's call because I'm meeting with a client to
discuss how they might comply with PIV.  The interesting wrinkle is that
they are not a government agency but see a great deal of value in the
PIV approach.  They have had internal and external CA's in operation
since 1999 for high assurance identity verification and are now looking
to "kick it up a notch."

I think the US Government PIV initiative is propelling reconsideration
of PKI by large enterprises and communities of interest/trust.
CertiPath (the aviation industry bridge CA) and SAFE (pharma CA) are
gaining traction in their respective communities.  It may well be that
the PKI "killer app" is not an application at all but rather a central
component of IA&A processes.  Path processing issues notwithstanding,
federation is getting more attention everyday and PKI is viewed as
essential plumbing - certainly not the glamour-child that the industry
marketed and hoped it would become.

The biggest hurdles for wider use in applications outside of IA&A remain
the absence of a universal, open source, cross-platform API(s) that only
need a glue-layer between the app and the API and another between the
vendor product and the API.  That way, application developers don't have
to bet on the best or most widely deployed vendor product. The other
barriers include cost (alleviated some by shared service providers),
awful user-interfaces and users' technical understanding requirements.

Paul


-----Original Message-----
From: Sabo, John T [mailto:John.T.Sabo@ca.com] 
Sent: Wednesday, May 17, 2006 5:43 AM
To: Anders Rundgren; Arshad Noor; PKI TC
Subject: RE: [pki-tc] PKI Hurdles. Re: [pki-tc] Meeting tomorrow

Anders raises a good point for discussion, especially with respect to
the U.S. Government personal identity verification initiative, which is
essentially intended for authentication for physical and logical
systems.  The access control components and additional applications are
not an emphasis of the NIST FIPS-201 guidance.  Of course, the U.S.
government is a huge collection of agencies with thousands of stove-pipe
systems, and a mix of legacy and COTS applications.  Some believe that
the PIV infrastructure will provide a basis for moving into the
application space (in a decade?), given this environment, since it
establishes a cross-government and government-contractor authentication
foundation.  

__________________________________
John T. Sabo, CISSP
Director, Security and Privacy Initiatives CA
Tel: +1 703-708-3037
Mobile: +1 443-629-6198
Fax: +1 703-709-4820
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-----Original Message-----
From: Anders Rundgren [mailto:anders.rundgren@telia.com]
Sent: Tuesday, May 16, 2006 3:29 PM
To: Arshad Noor; PKI TC
Subject: [pki-tc] PKI Hurdles. Re: [pki-tc] Meeting tomorrow

>Yet, many countries around the world, the US Federal Government, the 
>cable/satellite industry, the DRM world all use PKI in one form or
another.

>What is the real reason that the general business
 >applications/IT developers shun PKI?

I think the industry handles PKI quite appropriately.

The US government have indeed advanced plans to purchase 30 million+ PIV
cards for billions of USDs, but have so far spent close to nothing on
PKI application research, or showing how they anticipate that PKI is to
be used in general business applications including e-government dittos.

Without any tangible information, application building outside of login
becomes a pure guesswork.  Makers of business applications cannot really
do this guessing on their own.

I am afraid that we have to wait another decade for these PKI
application guidelines to surface.

In the mean-time PKI consultants over the world, enjoy a great time
spending tax-payer money, solving the same problem over and over and
each time with a new twist, turning this PKI application integration
circus into a virtual Perpetum Mobile.

regards
Anders Rundgren



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