The Blog of Harald

“John Udell writes”:http://weblog.infoworld.com/udell/2003/09/28.html#a809 about a new “edge” security technology:

bq. CoreStreet has just signed a deal with Swedish locksmith Assa Abloy that will enable doors to enforce highly granular card access policies without wired (or wireless) connections. When an employee swipes a card at the main entrance, it’s refreshed with a daily set of proofs. The door need only check that the proof binds a resource (itself) to an identity (the employee) at a certain time (today).

bq. CoreStreet’s president, Phil Libin, sketches another interesting scenario. Suppose an employee needs a proof to access her own laptop but can’t contact the network. Since proofs are minimally just 20 bytes, it’s feasible to convey one in a phone call.

This sounds like exactly the style of problem that PKI was supposed to solve, but utterly failed to do. I find this somewhat ironic in the aftermath of “Baltimore’s demise”:http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/story/0,3604,1047749,00.html.

The full story is available at “Infoworld”:http://www.infoworld.com/article/03/09/26/38OPstrategic_1.html.