Digital Fly Paper (Part II)
By Alex Ramia
VP of Product Development, Innofone.com, Inc.

There is an old saying, "You can't tell where you're going if don't know where you've been."

Last month I wrote about the birthof digital social networking and how it has become part of our global culture. My article covered a short history of where we came from in order to define the road we are now on. So to recap last month and place readers on a firm footing for this month, let me review.

We started with dialup modems and Bulletin Board Systems (BBS) based on a timeshare system that supported a very limited amount of simultaneous users with no realtime interaction. We evolved to the mainframe networks, still driven by modems, that now had realtime interaction, but failed to allow simultaneous users to connect. Then, after trying many mini-network deployments, we finally transitioned to the Transport Control Protocol (TCP) using Internet Protocol, also known as TCP/IP. This is the transport of the worldwide Web (WWW) as we know it today.

The Social Network
As of October 2006, it is clear that the social networking movement is not a fad or passing whim. Yahoo started the consolidation of social sites with the $100 million purchase of Flickr.com. News Corp. paid $580 million for MySpace, and then Google's purchase of the social website YouTube clearly defined 1.65 billion additional reasons why social networks are more than a whimsical expansion or experiment.

Other entertainment companies, such as Sony and Warner Music Group, have now jumped into creating social networks. As these social pools grow larger and more networks are consolidated, the demand for connectivity or access to such networks will blossom. This growth will demand security and order, as does the growth and migration from a village to a city. I surmise that researchers will find that social migrations of digital communities will already have evolved and that these migrations will mimic the real world in their technological, economic, and cultured groups, each with its own subcategories – and many evolutionary drivers pared down to one big one: money.

"Security in These Digital Communities is Laughable"
People wanting to gain access to such digital cities will place a burden on the system resources available. Equipment manufacturers have addressed some of these issues, but developing faster processors, larger storage devices, cheaper interface units, and distributed databases does not address equal access to the network. While on the surface these improvements seem to suffice, the amount of security in these digital communities is laughable at best, and in reality security has been mostly overlooked. In most cases, the residents of these communities are anonymous, have multiple identifiers, set traps to steal real world identification, and, in some notable cases, cause physical harm to citizens.

Let's take a typical user experience in one of these communities. Authentication is still the same as it has always been, a simple challenge response is requested — a name and a password. The reality of the uses is based on the honesty of the individual entering the data. Even there, location is subject to concern. In total, the percentage of accurate information provided to a citizen of a digital network is 100% reliant on the honesty of the individuals providing the information.

When viewed from this perspective, it is no small wonder that the honest are not willing to surrender accurate information. This rampant anonymity, while exciting at first, could become the harbinger of destruction to any social network if not assuaged. This outdated mode of identification in a digital network needs some major overhauling. We are no longer dealing with the old-time reliable networks of university backbones, nor the trusted access of mainframe networks. This is the modern online world — live, interactive, realtime, with digitally connected people making and spending many millions of dollars each day.

Identifying the Network Edge
In order to remove the anonymity of a community, the user base must be identified. However, in order to provide confidence to the community, the network itself must be identified. This is a situation that is analogous to the chicken and the egg. Who is identifying whom? In this case, the networks have established some level of credibility by creating a digital citizenship and establishing a community such as a digital city.

A form of digital government should be created to manage this universal ID. The current structure of the worldwide Web is built on yesterday's technologies — which were not designed for large social networks, but rather more for largely centralized computer systems. Distance was mostly measured in feet from the mainframe, and identity was regulated to the physical access to the terminal. This is a far cry from today's maverick access to social networks. The next necessary step is the creation of a reliable ID system that determines for the network who its citizens are from edge to edge.

"Bandits Reside and Operate with Impunity"
The networks have remained static in adapting to the growth of their users' interacting styles, and have not noticed the advent of smaller smarter devices connecting at a mobile edge. Today an Internet Service Provider (ISP) has become the tollgate for Internet access, which is a large step from the edge — a responsibility that now has to be factored in to every business model. These costs have been passed down to the user community, or, in most cases, absorbed by the ISP, reducing profit margins to slim pickings. However, with all this sophisticated and expensive structure and development, identification of most users on any ISP's network is still limited to time location and duration of a probable device.

The network at the real edge remains the frontier of the Web, where traps and bandits reside and operate with impunity. Countless protection programs for the digital traveler are available, and yet millions of dollars in revenues may be just a byte in a bit error away.

Network managers and users of the Internet are aware of this lawlessness that is so pervasive on the Web. The good news is that historically the foundation of an anonymous social structure without governance and accountability limits the growth and expansion of its communities. We can learn from this. The American frontier is a prime example of the need to establish social structure in order to promote healthy growth. California, once a lawless frontier territory, now has a GDP that is ranked as the 10th largest in the world, according to the CIA. For our digital society to grow beyond the 1.65 billion new reasons that Google just invested in, we have to define the edge to include "who" and "what" are accessing the resources of a social network.

Identify and be Identified
In past articles on this site and others, a concept of identification has been discussed and is now in the deployment stages. That concept provides a number that is unique to each and every device that accesses the network. It is a monumental improvement on the current version, which is inherently unsecured and not scalable. For the first time, each and every device and user can be clearly identified so that there is little chance of misidentification. It is the next generation of underlying transport that allows a digital society to function on a global scale, and provide equal access for all those participating.

The Benefits of a Digital Identity
Most people worry greatly when the mention of removal of anonymity is broached. The concern is ill-placed. Being properly identified removes a false illusion of protection (from anonymity) and allows proper tools that protect your digital identity to be deployed — tools that are built-in. These tools can operate without user intervention and will protect users automatically. Your digital identity is always verified to the edge, no matter where the edge is. As a global presence you will thus no longer be "spoofable," no longer can your identity be impersonated with ease, and transactions can be secure and realtime. From an individual's point of view, the benefits of a physical ID are found all around us in our real world. We should demand such an ID in our digital world.

The business community has as much, if not more, to gain from this individualization of its user base. Better services can be created for such individual users — including safer communities and more secure transactions.

In summary, many of us are stuck on old traditions about the Web, like flies on flypaper. It is time that we apply the true lessons of the past to our new digital frontier, and demand the establishment of "law and order" within our new large-scale social networks – which can only be made possible by the enabling of reliable and secure forms of identification.