My MS Passport Concerns

So i got interested in implementing MS Passport for a site.. i realised that apart from the huge buzz around privacy, monopoly in Passport services, use of passport will eliminate a lot of code from my website.. code to:
  1. maintain credential management modules in my DB
  2. design pages for login, forgot password, change password etc.

I got some very good article from www.extremeexperts.com that walked me through designing my own passport page..

and then the news that Passport is no longer being promoted by MS hit! so I set out to find if Passport is the right way to go and i was surprised to find that MS Passport is not only alive and kicking but also planning a 3.0 release! Look at some of the things i found:

"We would like to take this opportunity to assure you in the strongest terms possible that Microsoft remains committed to the continued evolution of the Passport Service, and to continued support for our Passport partners and their users. While we have refined our focus for Passport over the years, we are still on-boarding new partners who have affiliation with MSN or other Microsoft offerings. Currently, Passport supports over 100 partners around the world, and delivers reliable and secure authentication services for over 250 million active users every day."

"Consumers and partners will begin to reap the rewards of these investments with the Passport 3.0 release, scheduled to ship later this spring. Some of the key features you will be able to utilize in the Passport 3.0 release include:

  1. A more flexible co-branded signup and sign-in experience that includes the secure password Strength Meter and an improved Human Interactive Proof (HIP) puzzle
  2. Comprehensive, programmatic access to all Passport functionality.
  3. Support for the WS-* standards-based authentication protocols which forms the foundation for our federated identity support. The Active Directory Federation Services(ADFS), formally coded-named TrustBridge, is a feature of the R2 release Windows Server 2003 than enable organizations to federate identities across organizational and security boundaries using the WS-* standards. Using ADFS, IT customers can build their own federated trust networks to enable single sign-on to their customers and business partners over the Internet.
  4. Digital certificate, standardized win32 client application integration support
  5. A new version of the Passport Manager tool designed to simplify integration with passport integration and aid in troubleshooting.
  6. Several security features to make the service more robust
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This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights.

Comments

Anonymous said…
Where did you get this Passport info from as I too thought passport was dead and would be replaced by InfoCards.
October 11, 2005 at 8:39:00 PM GMT+5:30
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