When Marina Sum interviewed Sun's Director of Engineering for Access and Federation Management Jamie Nelson, one of his most striking observations was that "...in developing Web applications...identity is often an afterthought." Worse yet, he added, too often, the security portion of an application is typically built in a rush, sometimes with boilerplate community code. The implications for single sign-on (SSO) in such a case are not good, he said.
Sun Distinguished Engineer Glenn Brunette and Principal Engineer Rafat Alvi, members of the Sun Inner Circle, shared their views on the security threats to success in web scale enterprises, examining the subject of asset protection as connectivity expands geometrically. According to Brunette, "because Web scale deployments reach so many people through constantly evolving delivery methods, long-standing security matters can take on new dimensions.”
Pat Patterson, a member of Sun's access and federation management team and community manager for Open SSO, identified the transition from traditional proprietary development to open source as the biggest challenge OpenSSO faces, as he answered questions put to him by Marina Sum. This situation is caused by the need for Sun engineers to be "up front" in their work, out in the open, so to speak, working within the community of outside contributors and with their colleagues at Sun as well.
Customized news reports about Sun Microsystems. Just the news you need, none of what you don't. 50,000+ Members. 20,000+ Articles Published since 1998.
