Looking into the Crystal Ball

Abstract

If we had a crystal ball, what would it show for the future of identity management? As the swirling mists part in our all-seeing globe, it would undoubtedly show identity management becoming increasingly necessary in the future for several reasons. First, it is unlikely that hackers will stop hacking, which means we’ll continue to need security measures to protect against increasingly diverse and potentially more automated threats. At the same time, there will be many innovative new services and devices that will be beneficial in our lives, but they’ll need adequate identity management to reduce the risk of them being used against us. We’ll also see a rise in autonomous entities requiring identification, authentication, and authorization just like humans. The notion of identity will need to spread from humans to all manner of devices, agents, and robots acting on our behalf, and such entities will need identity management as part of their defenses against malicious attacks. For all these reasons, the need for identity management will be more important than ever before, and we’ll need to do a lot more to make it easier to implement and manage effectively.