Mike Jones: self-issued

Musings on Digital Identity

Month: April 2015

Perspectives on the OpenID Connect Certification Launch

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On April 30, 2015

In Documentation, Events, Interoperability, OpenID, Software

OpenID Certified logoMany of you were involved in the launch of the OpenID Foundation’s certification program for OpenID Connect Implementations. I believe that OpenID Certification is an important milestone on the road to widely-available interoperable digital identity. It increases the likelihood that OpenID Connect implementations by different parties will “just work” together.

A fair question is “why do we need certification when we already have interop testing?”. Indeed, as many of you know, I was highly involved in organizing five rounds of interop testing for OpenID Connect implementations while the specs were being developed. By all measures, these interop tests were highly effective, with participation by 20 different implementations, 195 members of the interop testing list, and over 1000 messages exchanged among interop participants. Importantly, things learned during interop testing were fed back into the specs, making them simpler, easier to understand, and better aligned with what developers actually need for their use cases. After improving the specs based on the interop, we’d iterate and hold another interop round. Why not stop there?

As I see it, certification adds to the value already provided by interop testing by establishing a set of minimum criteria that certified implementations have been demonstrated meet. In an interop test, by design, you can test the parts of the specs that you want and ignore the rest. Whereas certification raises the bar by defining a set of conformance profiles that certified implementations have been demonstrated to meet. That provides value to implementers by providing assurances that if their code sticks to using features covered by the conformance tests and uses certified implementations, their implementations will seamlessly work together.

The OpenID Foundation opted for self-certification, in which the party seeking certification does the testing, rather than third-party certification, in which a third party is paid to test the submitter’s implementation. Self-certification is simpler, quicker, and less expensive than third-party certification. Yet the results are nonetheless trustworthy, both because the testing logs are made available for public scrutiny as part of the certification application, and because the organization puts its reputation on the line by making a public declaration that its implementation conforms to the profile being certified to.

A successful certification program doesn’t just happen. At least a man-year of work went into creating the conformance profiles, designing and implementing the conformance testing software, testing and refining the tests, testing implementations and fixing bugs found, creating the legal framework enabling self-certification, and putting it all in place. The OpenID Connect Working Group conceived of a vision for a simple but comprehensive self-certification program, created six detailed conformance profiles based on the requirements in the specs, and quickly addressed issues as participants had questions and identified problems during early conformance testing. Roland Hedberg did heroes’ work creating the conformance testing software and responding quickly as issues were found. Don Thibeau shared the vision for “keeping simple things simple” and extended that mantra we employed when designing OpenID Connect to the legal and procedural frameworks enabling self-certification. And many thanks to the engineers from Google, ForgeRock, Ping Identity, NRI, PayPal, and Microsoft who rolled up their sleeves and tested both their code and the tests, improving both along the way. You’ve all made a lasting contribution to digital identity!

I think the comment I most appreciated about the certification program was made by Eve Maler, herself a veteran of valuable certification programs past, who said “You made it as simple as possible so every interaction added value”. High praise!

Here’s some additional perspectives on the OpenID Certification launch:

10 Years of Digital Identity!

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On April 11, 2015

In Events, People

How time flies! In March 2005 I began working on digital identity. This has by far been the most satisfying phase of my career, both because of the great people I’m working with, and because we’re solving real problems together.

An interesting thing about digital identity is that, by definition, it’s not a problem that any one company can solve, no matter how great their technology is. For digital identity to be “solved”, the solution has to be broadly adopted, or else people will continue having different experiences at different sites and applications. Solving digital identity requires ubiquitously adopted identity standards. Part of the fun and the challenge is making that happen.

Microsoft gets this, backs our work together, and understands that when its identity products work well with others that our customers and partners choose to use, we all win. Very cool.

Those who of you who’ve shared the journey with me have experienced lots of highs and lows. Technologies that have been part of the journey have included Information Cards, SAML, OpenID 2.0, OAuth 2.0, JSON Web Tokens (JWTs), JSON Web Signing and Encryption (JOSE), and OpenID Connect. Work has been done in OASIS, the Information Card Foundation, the OpenID Foundation, the Open Identity Exchange (OIX), the Liberty Alliance, the IETF, the W3C, the FIDO Alliance, and especially lots of places where the right people chose to get together, collaborate, and made good things happen — particularly the Internet Identity Workshop.

It’s worth noting that this past week the Internet Identity Workshop held its 20th meeting. They’ve been held like clockwork every spring and fall for the past 10 years, providing an indispensable, irreplaceable venue for identity practitioners to come together and get things done. My past 10 years wouldn’t have been remotely the same without the past 10 years of IIW. My sincerest thanks to Phil, Doc, and Kaliya for making it happen!

I won’t try to name all the great people I’ve worked with and am working with because no matter how many I list, I’d be leaving more out. You know who you are!

While we’re all busy solving problems together and we know there’s so much more to do, it’s occasionally good to step back and reflect upon the value of the journey. As Don Thibeau recently observed when thanking Phil Windley for 10 years of IIW, “these are the good old days”.

OpenID Connect working group presentation at April 6, 2015 OpenID workshop

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On April 6, 2015

In Events, OpenID

OpenID logoI’ve posted the OpenID Connect working group presentation that I gave at the April 6, 2015 OpenID Workshop. It covers the current specification approval votes for the OpenID 2.0 to OpenID Connect Migration and OAuth 2.0 Form Post Response Mode specifications, the status of the session management/logout specifications, and OpenID Connect Certification. It’s available as PowerPoint and PDF.

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