DENVER, Oct. 10, 2002 — As a part of Microsoft Corp.’s participation at the first Digital Identity World 2002 Conference, the company outlined its vision for connecting islands of digital identities across organizations, people, applications and devices. In his keynote address, “How Digital Identity Helps Deliver Trustworthy Computing,” Craig Mundie, senior vice president and chief technical officer at Microsoft, described the technical and policy implications of digital identity for the long-term industry goal of Trustworthy Computing.
“As computers operate in ever more interconnected environments, people will need to feel they are in control of reliable systems of identity and not have to grapple with the many islands of identities that exist today,” Mundie said. “The industry is engaging in an open dialogue on how to address the business and policy implications of creating and exchanging digital identities. Safe, reliable digital identities are part of what the industry needs to deliver on to achieve the long-term goal of Trustworthy Computing.”
As a part of his keynote address, Mundie also outlined how Microsoft is helping provide the needed infrastructure and platform services for companies and consumers to create, manage, use and exchange digital identities in a secure, trusted way, including the following future Microsoft® Passport enhancements and introduction of the new Passport Manager Source Licensing Program.
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Passport Manager Licensing Program. Enabling companies to ease integration of applications with Passport, the Passport Manager Source Licensing Program allows access to and use of Passport Manager source code to develop, debug and support both commercial and noncommercial software for the purpose of integration. Mundie described how the latest expansion of the Microsoft Shared Source Initiative will enable licensed companies, academicians, developers and governments worldwide to benefit from free access to Passport Manager source code. The Microsoft Shared Source Initiative is an effort to increase code transparency for a variety of Microsoft product offerings, including Windows® , Windows CE and Microsoft .NET technologies. Beginning in November, program participants will be able to take advantage of enhanced debugging, internal support and troubleshooting for Passport integrations, and built-in mechanisms to help developers improve their designs and applications. Passport Manager is a COM object that runs at a Passport partner Web site to manage communication and integration with the Passport service. Currently, Microsoft makes versions of the Passport manager available for the Windows operating system and certain versions of UNIX.
“Better integration through access to the source code will help us drive adoption of innovative digital identity technologies across our customers’ heterogeneous environments,” said Mark Griesi, strategic solutions architect at OpenNetwork Technologies Inc. “The Passport Manager Shared Source program will help promote a healthy ecosystem for ISVs wishing to deliver solutions that incorporate digital identity.”
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Passport Password Quality Meter. User names and passwords provide a security mechanism for accessing important user data. In many cases, the strength of a user’s password can be increased by including uppercase and lowercase letters, numbers and symbols, while avoiding commonly used passwords such as a middle name, the name of a pet or a birthday. Mundie gave the audience an early glimpse at the Passport Password Quality Meter, which is designed to give Passport users the tools to gauge and improve the strength of their Passport password in a clear, easy manner.
About the Shared Source Initiative
The Microsoft Shared Source Initiative is a balanced approach that makes source code more broadly available while preserving the intellectual property rights that sustain a strong software business. The Shared Source Initiative framework supports a spectrum of programs and licenses offered by Microsoft to various communities of customers, partners, developers, academicians and other interested individuals.
Each source-licensing program under the Shared Source Initiative is tailored to the specific needs of a particular Microsoft constituent community, and can be applied as a model for increasing code transparency throughout commercial software. Shared Source is an evolving framework that will support additional source-code access programs and licenses involving many Microsoft product groups. Currently, Windows 2000, Windows XP, Windows .NET Server, Windows CE 3.0 , Windows CE .NET, Windows .NET technologies and Microsoft Passport have source code available through the Shared Source Initiative.
About Microsoft
Founded in 1975, Microsoft (Nasdaq “MSFT” ) is the worldwide leader in software, services and Internet technologies for personal and business computing. The company offers a wide range of products and services designed to empower people through great software — any time, any place and on any device.
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