Ping Identity Streamlines Authentication

Pete Prestipino — Thu, 26 May 2011 21:30:00 GMT

Ping Identity released PingFederate released a solution this week dubbed Cloud Identity Connectors which enables organizations to rely on cloud services providers and social networking sites for third-party user authentication. Ping Identity is a rather significant player in the market, securing 40 of the Fortune 100 using secure, open, standards like SAML, OpenID and OAuth.

The Ping Identity "Connectors" enable businesses to allow sign-on through (and connect with) six of the largest cloud service and social network sites, including Google (and other OpenID 2.0 providers), Salesforce and Facebook.

In a report from Blue Research released in February 2011, titled "Consumer Perceptions of Online Registration and Social Sign-In", 75 percent of line shoppers stated they may leave or note use a site that requires registration. When you successfully remove the barriers (in this case user registration) the result is not only a better user experience on the whole but higher user adoption, usage and purchase rates.

“The registration process is a source of frustration for consumers online – they are just as likely to leave a site as they are to spend the time to create a new identity profile. To increase registration and purchase rates, online businesses need to make access easier, without compromising security,” said Roger Oberg, Vice President of Marketing for Ping Identity. “PingFederate Cloud Identity Connectors provide our customers with ways to simply and securely authenticate their users into their Web properties by leveraging LinkedIn and other popular social networking services.”

Be Your Own OpenID Provider

Pete Prestipino — Mon, 23 Feb 2009 22:35:00 GMT

As more and more sites and services start offering OpenID for authentication, you may decide that it would be better to go it alone and be your own OpenID provider (instead of going with one of the other hundreds of providers).

phpMyID uses two PHP files that allow website owners to use their domain name for authentication to OpenID-supporting sites. Just download the archive from the sites, upload the files, configure and place a few HTML tags in your index page, and you will be able to use your website as your personal OpenID URL when logging in to OpenID sites.

For those unfamiliar with OpenID, it is "an open, decentralized, free frameworkd for user-centric digital identity." In layman's terms, OpenID is a way to authenticate/prove that it is actually you that is logging in to a service. Instead of providing a username/password combo, all you'll need to enter is a URL. When you do, you're directed to your identity provider (in this case, your own URL) to log in. When you are authenticated, you go back to the site you were trying to get into, and you're off and running.

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'Net Features : openid

Ping Identity Streamlines Authentication

Be Your Own OpenID Provider