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The list of partner vendors have a lot of smart people and influence, but there are key players who are absent from it, but are some of the most important playe

The list of partner vendors have a lot of smart people and influence, but there are key players who are absent from it, but are some of the most important players in IAA/IAM. To me the notable ones who have more customer traction than some of them on the list are companies like Apple, Hashicorp, Forgerock, Tanium, and any of the emerging self sovereign identity and blockchain identity vendors who all still have non-linear growth in front of them. I have worked on and partnered with some of the largest public sector digital identity schemes in the world, and almost none of the players who actually have traction in those organizations are represented. Microsoft has their B2B service, which is the inferior product you choose when you don't have expertise, and even though I think Okta is an excellent product and Duo (via Cisco) are fantastic, most of the parties represented aren't what developers, architects, and the people who actually build and use these techs would select. I realize these are IAA/IAM products, but ZTA has a bootstrapping problem without a foundation in identity. (Though I was glad to see Oracle wasn't on the list, even though they are the identity elephant in the room.) I like Zero Trust as a concept, but it's going to take more organic growth and integration with IAM and with the traction of companies like those missing vendors to make it viable. The players on the list right now are all enterprise vendors, but it's startups who are the ones growing and adopting standards - and using those missing organic-demand vendors whose customers actually want their tech instead of having it imposed. The growth companies hold the real influence on standards implementation because they are the adopters. Enterprise customers aren't going to change anytime soon, and having enterprise (slow linear to flat growth) vendors as your partner channel seems risky. I agree ZTA will be a thing, but without exposure to non-linear growth, they may just be inventing another SAML.

tptacek 4y ago
There is maybe no less promising blockchain application than identity. It solves none of the real problems, and introduces its own.
- motohagiography 4y ago
  Arguably, identity is the only application for which blockchains are the most suitable for the reason that identity itself is the artifact of a consensus. I'll share the argument here in case you haven't read this particular driver for it yet, and it needs scrutiny. The reasoning goes that in govt, you have licenses and birth certificates, SINs and ID cards, and depending on the legal regime, there are limitations for the legal uses of each of those. Banks could theoretically offer ID because they have more information about you, but then they take on risk and liability in its usages. Second, each transaction that requires identity only needs a certain level of assurance, and what these orgs have agreed to is they will contribute their user identity attributes to a blockchain to support an identifying consensus without holding any risk or having any responsibility for the usage, while providing a high degree of institutional assurance that their contribution is verified and supported by KYC, pattern of life, anti-fraud etc. In this case, identity is an epiphenomenal artifact of the consensus. Where I might agree is that I don't think strong identity itself is valuable, it in fact destroys value, and the consensus just implements the impunity and social anti-pattern of a one-way committee decision - and I think it's an imposition that doesn't help anyone except make them more exposed to remote enforcement of fines and petty policies. e.g. Yay, now you can get parking tickets in foreign countries, and all the use cases are variations of that. However, if you want recourse and sanctions of individuals that are portable without integrating with central national identity schemes, a blockchain is the way to do that. That's the most succinct version I think there is. The irony may be that civil liberties may be the strongest argument against blockchains because they are the cryptological implementation of a committee or star chamber when their consensus represents a monopoly or "radical monopoly."
  - thadt 4y ago
    The problem is that 'identity' is context specific. You're right that it is an artifact of consensus - but it is actually consensus in different groups for different reasons and at different points in time. An interesting study on identity is the (book/play/film) Les Misérables. At various points in the story, the protagonist is a prisoner (#24601), a Frenchman (Jean Valjean), a factory owner (Monsieur Madeleine), and a community leader (Monsieur le Maire). The main antagonist in the story, Javert, is so strongly biased in his rigid system of classifying people, that he is unable to accept Valjean's identity as anything other than a criminal - prisoner 24601. The internal dissonance this creates when Valjean continues to defy this categorization eventually results in Javert's demise. At the beginning of the story, the protagonist's identity _is_ prisoner 24601. At the end of the story, it is not. Identity changes with time, context and circumstances, and how that identity is asserted will also vary from group to group.

tptacek 4y ago

There is maybe no less promising blockchain application than identity. It solves none of the real problems, and introduces its own.

motohagiography 4y ago
Arguably, identity is the only application for which blockchains are the most suitable for the reason that identity itself is the artifact of a consensus. I'll share the argument here in case you haven't read this particular driver for it yet, and it needs scrutiny. The reasoning goes that in govt, you have licenses and birth certificates, SINs and ID cards, and depending on the legal regime, there are limitations for the legal uses of each of those. Banks could theoretically offer ID because they have more information about you, but then they take on risk and liability in its usages. Second, each transaction that requires identity only needs a certain level of assurance, and what these orgs have agreed to is they will contribute their user identity attributes to a blockchain to support an identifying consensus without holding any risk or having any responsibility for the usage, while providing a high degree of institutional assurance that their contribution is verified and supported by KYC, pattern of life, anti-fraud etc. In this case, identity is an epiphenomenal artifact of the consensus. Where I might agree is that I don't think strong identity itself is valuable, it in fact destroys value, and the consensus just implements the impunity and social anti-pattern of a one-way committee decision - and I think it's an imposition that doesn't help anyone except make them more exposed to remote enforcement of fines and petty policies. e.g. Yay, now you can get parking tickets in foreign countries, and all the use cases are variations of that. However, if you want recourse and sanctions of individuals that are portable without integrating with central national identity schemes, a blockchain is the way to do that. That's the most succinct version I think there is. The irony may be that civil liberties may be the strongest argument against blockchains because they are the cryptological implementation of a committee or star chamber when their consensus represents a monopoly or "radical monopoly."
- thadt 4y ago
  The problem is that 'identity' is context specific. You're right that it is an artifact of consensus - but it is actually consensus in different groups for different reasons and at different points in time. An interesting study on identity is the (book/play/film) Les Misérables. At various points in the story, the protagonist is a prisoner (#24601), a Frenchman (Jean Valjean), a factory owner (Monsieur Madeleine), and a community leader (Monsieur le Maire). The main antagonist in the story, Javert, is so strongly biased in his rigid system of classifying people, that he is unable to accept Valjean's identity as anything other than a criminal - prisoner 24601. The internal dissonance this creates when Valjean continues to defy this categorization eventually results in Javert's demise. At the beginning of the story, the protagonist's identity _is_ prisoner 24601. At the end of the story, it is not. Identity changes with time, context and circumstances, and how that identity is asserted will also vary from group to group.