Ozzie on Board

Enterprise Software / It's time to rebuild the Internet - Tech Update - ZDNet

Another critical part of taking friction out of interacting on the Internet is creating standard authentication and security models that work across the more decentralized architecture of the Internet. Ozzie pointed to firewalls as a major problem that disrupts cross-enterprise communication, and gives a false sense of security. Given that most cyber security breaches come from insiders, that may be the case, but right now firewalls are one of the few lines of defense.

Ozzie believes that the industry should embrace a more "cellular" model for trust and authentication instead of the current hierarchical security model. "Today, each enterprise has its own directory. The different directory products allow for delegation and assume that trust is hierarchical--meaning the boss authorizes employee access levels --but that's not the way people interact across increasingly decentralized enterprises or within peer groups," Ozzie said. Groove has built a more cellular-oriented trust and authentication model to get around the firewall problem in its own domain, but it won't be easy to go beyond that realm.