Home » Identity & Access » Identity Management

Industry View

Your Identity: "Costanza Style"

Your identity, like an overcrowded wallet, is ready to burst. David Miller, chief security officer for Covisint, tells us how to solve the problem

By David Miller, CSO, Covisint

February 09, 2009 — CSO —

Your identity is like George Costanza's wallet. Really. Think about it. Do you remember the classic Seinfeld episode? The one where George wouldn't give up his ever-expanding wallet filled with store credit cards, Irish money, a coupon for an Orlando Exxon gas station and several Sweet and Low packets. This, in spite of the obvious physical pain it caused and the security threat all of that imposed.

Costanza actually sat with a limp (if one can do that) when talking to Jerry and Elaine at the diner because his wallet was so fat. He remedied the situation, as only George could, by folding a fistful of restaurant napkins to support his other "cheek."

In the next scene when he saw an advertisement on a telephone pole, he tore from the posting a wafer-thin piece of paper and injected it into the wallet. Seconds later, the entire thing exploded, spewing its contents into the middle of the street with Costanza going ballistic.

Priceless.

The parallels between George's wallet and your identity are glaring. Both just: -are too complex and bulky (too many username and password combinations to remember) -are unsafe if they fall into malicious hands; and -might explode one day soon, causing you all kinds of grief, risk, fear, money and embarrassment.

That's the bad news.

The good news is that identity problems are solvable. Today. In fact, this problem has already been solved, which I'll get to in a minute. The key you need to remember now is: don't be like George. When it comes to identity, consider me your own, personal "Inner Jerry."

Yada, yada, yada.

Back in October, just before Halloween in fact, I wrote about the things that keep identity management professionals awake at night in an article called Spooked! The Top 13 Identity Management Fears. That piece articulated the challenges organizations face in the scary new world of identity management, diagnosing and benchmarking just how bad all-things-identity had become.

Now, I'm prescribing a fix for the problem. Oh, and the prognosis for a cure is excellent, provided that in this brave new identity world (a world I'm calling "The Next Identity Model"), a few key steps are followed.

First, we'll start with defining the identity problem. Then, we'll look at parallels to how entire industries have already solved historically similar kinds of challenges. Next, I'll help you understand where this whole cottage-industry-in-waiting is headed from both a consumer and business perspective. And, finally, I'll paint a vision of what "The Next Identity Model" will look like so that a Costanza-like problem doesn't blow up in your face.