A Book Every Identity Person Should Read
Wednesday, January 27, 2010 at 09:23AM Understanding Windows Cardspace - An Introduction to the Concepts and Challenges of Digital Identities. Written by the brilliant Mssrs. Vittorio Bertocci, Caleb Baker & Garrett Serack.
I'll admit that this one was relegated to "Page 7 of 8" on my list of unread Kindle titles for many moons, and I just pulled it up while working out on the elliptical last night. (Best use case ever for the Kindle, I might add - I can stay on the elliptical for an hour at a decent clip without getting bored, since I'm reading.) I think the reason I hadn't gotten 'round to it was because...I'm an enterprise Identity lady, and I just haven't quite gotten my brain around use cases for Cardspace & InfoCard in a corporate environment yet. (Hi BP. Hi Matt.) Now, in the consumer identity space? Boy howdy will Cardspace be a killer thing...I'm just not quite sure where it fits into my happy world of AD domain controllers and ADFS federation agreements yet, still thinking on that one.
But even if you're of a similar mindset/background, you want to read this book. It's kinda Bruce Schneier-esque in its treatment of capital "I" Identity as a concept - how it has evolved on the Internet, what the problems and attack vectors are, and how to think about them conceptually as well as technically. And more to the point, it does all of this in a ridiculously well-written manner (again with the parallels to Schneier). Unlike a lot of technical books that are dry to the point of being a good substitute for Ambien at night, this one is actually erudite, occasionally funny, and an entirely enjoyable read.
So go buy it. And pre-order Vittorio's WIF book as well while you're at it.
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