Passport moves into business arena despite fears

Microsoft is pushing a new security standard to allow independent sites to sign up to its passport verification services.

This network or 'federation' of sites will allow Microsoft to move passport into the corporate arena. Once your identity is verified by one passport site you will be allowed access to any other passport site. The Kerberos v5 standard will govern security standards between sites.

Passport is already used by 75 consumer sites but Bill Gates told US wires yesterday he is keen to extend it to the corporate market. Companies would use passport to verify business-to-business transactions. But analysts fear this raises greater security issues.

Microsoft wants passport to become the de facto standard for transactions over the net. The open door initiative is expected to attract corporate customers to its .Net scheme as a simple log-in system for secure and authenticated B2B and B2C transactions.

Ashim Pal, analyst at Meta Group said: "Microsoft is trying to be an important part of digital authentication where it provides the infrastructure on any digital device, but unlike Verisign and Baltimore, Microsoft is not really credible in this area.

"Microsoft sees its biggest competitor as AOL. AOL has the user interaction and user relationship, it provides the interaction environment and the identification infrastructure."

The battle is going to be messy. Pal said: "This is going to be like Unix all over again, where versions are nominally the same but actually very different. It's going to be very untidy and I don't expect to see any resolution for many years to come."

Pal said the biggest immediate problem facing Microsoft is consumer trust: "The question is, how willing are people to accept a digital identification device? People are still wary of using desktop PCs and devices other than mobile phones for transactions."

AOL Time Warner operates an authentication equivalent to Passport called Screen Name Service and did a deal with Amazon in July this year for the use of it's e-wallet services. This was seen as a strike against Microsoft's growing monopoly.

In addition, Sun Microsystems spokesmen have stated the company will announce authentication partnership deals with key online banking services and insurance companies to stop Microsoft cornering the market.