A keystone to Cloud 2.0 is Cloud Identity – Common identity systems for single sign-on across Cloud as well as internal applications.

Implementing Cloud Identity best practices is achieved through ‘IDaaS’ – Identity as a Service, one of the services on our Roadmap.

A great example is this recent press release from NASA, about their use of ‘PIV’ technologies to secure their move to Google apps, and these are best practices defined in detail @ IDmanagement.gov.

Furthermore there is OMB M-11-11, which is a Whitehouse memo increasing the pressure to be implementing the HSPD-12 program, the Homeland Security Presidential Directive 12. This calls for use of identity technologies to better secure government systems, most notably ‘PIV’ (Personal Identity Verification) smartcards and associated key developments like PIV interoperability.

.

Social Sign-on
These developments aren’t limited to the VPN access technologies for staff, it expands holistically to provide a foundation for ‘Trusted Identities in Cyberspace’, in such a way as to enable features like ‘Social Sign-on’. One example vendor is Janrain.

This is a process where you can log in to one site (eg. a government claims site) using your username/password already supplied to another web site, like Facebook for example. Hence ‘social sign-on’.

The USA policy requirements for the public sector for this are documented in this Whitehouse directive requiring agencies to begin accepting signin credentials from external sites. 

• Turning Identity-as-a-Service Inside Out