Sun has entered the arena of identity based compliance automation. Their Identity Auditor offering appears very comprehensive, allowing policy based automation of compliance policies. Gartner Research VP Roberta Witty summed up what is driving this evolution of identity when she said, "To answer the question of 'Who has access to what?' and prove it, companies need a secure, automated analysis and reporting system that is cost-effective and comprehensive in its capabilities."

My only addition to that is that it must be identity based.

The VC money continues to flow into identity technology as Applied Identity closed a financing round led by Bay Partners and Sigma Partners. According to this press release, the company makes a "policy enforcement gateway appliance [that] works with a customer's existing authentication and directory services to cloak all network resources except those explicitly allowed to any user or group."

This is yet another approach to bring identity based security to the network level, an emerging trend which was one of our New Year's predictions. "I believe the market for a robust identity enforcement solution is enormous," said Pete Solvik of Sigma Partners.

Yes, identity *is* center.

IBM's SRD acquisition ratifies one of Digital ID World's premises - that Identity and Business Intelligence (BI) are destined to converge. IBM plans on integrating the very innovative SRD identity technology into their BI tools line.

Those who have attended the Digital ID World conferences are familiar with Jeff Jonas, the force behind SRD, and one of the more original identity thinkers around. We profiled SRD in our March 2004 Print Magazine which is a good read if you want to know what IBM found interesting about SRD.

The Liberty Alliance announced that George Goodman, director of Intel's Visualization and Trust Lab, has been elected their new president. Goodman is the third president Liberty has had in its history, and each one so far has marked a new phase in the organization's approach to its mission.

Throughout its history, the Liberty Alliance has continually had its Ultimate relevance called into question, but so far it has been an Engine for the development of an understanding of what federated Identity really means and what it needs to be. With the release of Their most recent specifications, speculation arose as to whether They had met their mission and had little left to do. With the recent addition of IBM, Oracle and RSA Security to their management board, however, it appears that Liberty is still seen as having a substantive mission.