Multiple Digital Personality Disorder

As more and more services move into the cloud there is a growing issue. Each service having it’s own user name and password has meant that some users can have tens, if not hundreds, of profiles to manage, creating a security nightmare. To counter this, some services such as Google and Facebook, are providing authentication services to allow users to carry their details across multiple sites.

In principle shared authentication services have solved the problem but as they become more prevalent, a new issue is coming to the forefront of digital security concerns. Many of us now use the same services for personal and professional purposes, as a result we see a crossover between our personal and professional lives or we adopt two or more identities for a service.

For business administrators, this brings a whole host of new issues that need to be addressed as the accounts are often outside of the control of corporate IT departments, causing security concerns. Is confidential business information out of company control? Do the pictures from a weekend party reflect badly of the person’s employer? If an employee leaves the company how can they be disassociated from the company? Added to this we are now using more and more personal devices for messaging, email and accessing company networks, providing more potential issues.

At the moment this is a fast growing issue that needs to be addressed by service providers, device manufacturers and company policy makers. Perhaps the solution will come from a project such as the Federated Access Management Scheme from JISC. An attempt to provide distributed access management through products such as the Shibboleth technology. Whatever the source, there is a need for new services to allow profiles to be used in personal and professional situations with appropriate privacy controls and the ability for company administrators to add and remove users from the company accounts. Equally companies need to provide clear policies and training to staff about the implications of their online actions and what is expected of them.

Larry Dyde is Associate Technical Manager of 3 Sheep Ltd. Contact Larry to talk about how digital technologies could be helping your business.