Turning the identity thing upside down

Haven’t you thought it as strange that your digital identity becomes weaker the more it is exposed? In fact is it an identity at all? After all it is only a record in a database, or an object comprised of attributes in an X.500 tree, or something written on a plastic ‘id card’. It is all of these, and replicated, maybe hundreds of instances, accurately and inaccurately all over the world.

In fact where is your digital identity? Is it real? If it is real then why do you have no control over it?

Why does your digital identity not reflect exactly how your physical identity works in the real physical world? When you are born you are referenced, i.e. probably starting with your parents declaring that you are their son/daughter and what your name is (your identity), relations and friends do the same… your identity strengthens. You start kindergarten and school, perhaps you have been assigned a national id number…. you are referenced, every reference to you strengthens your identity. The louder you shout, the more famous you become, the stronger your identity grows. In fact the President, Prime Minister, King, Queen, etc., probably have the strongest identities.

It is difficult to commit identity fraud on strong identities. So I return to my first question, why does it not work the same in the digital world?

Securing XBRL – the next challenge

I just realised that I forgot to let you know that I co-published an article in the last week. My first publication since 2010… looks like I’m in business again…. Having said that, it is not that I haven’t been writing anything.. there’s this blog, and my MBA (that I finished January 2013). Although I must admit my blog activity has been a bit sketchy the last 3 years.

Back to the article. It is about securing XBRL. XBRL stands for eXtensible Business Reporting Language. It has been declared as the standard for financial reporting in Basel III. However XBRL is the child of XML, and XML is not secure. Hence back to the topic of the article. I will write more, for example I plan to explain what XBRL is, for those of you that are clueless about financial reporting. I was myself until I realised it came from XML, and XML I became intimate with when I was working in Switzerland from Zurich as a consultant coding connectors for Novell’s meta-directory service, often on beta versions, and working from readme.txt files as there were no books in 2000. I didn’t get much sleep during this year, but I sure did have fun!