Hello everyone
This is the running update from the Executive Director. Have questions or comments? Suggest some added information or edits? Contact ED Colin at kantarainitiative dot org.
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While weather extremes continue to impact our members around the globe be it the searing heat and bush fires in Australia, unseasonal heat and peat fires in the north of England, or heavy dumps of snow in the US (even snow in Las Vegas and Hawaii!), the digital identity and personal data privacy domains stepped up a gear as this year’s conference season gets into full swing.
February enabled Kantara's Assurance program to show the results of weeks of intense activity in the Assurance Review Board with two major announcements. The first was Experian's CrossCore Platform Service which was approved under Kantara's “NIST 800-63 rev.3” Class of Approval and gained the coveted Kantara Trust Mark for NIST 800-63 rev.3-conformant services. The second was Excelsior Security Solutions, that became a Kantara Accredited Assessor the last week of February following a recommendation by the Assurance Review Board and Kantara Board of Director’s approval.
February 1st heralded the official opening of calls for proposals for Kantara Initiative Europe's 2019 European Union H2020 grant funded NGI_Trust project with other consortia members GEANT, Fraunhofer, Tecnalia, EFIS and EDN. The call closes April 30th and has received strong interest already with nearly two months remaining. Regardless of whether you are a European-based individual, research institute, start-up or mature company that is building solutions for the Next Generation Internet, we need your help to make those solutions human-centric by developing them to be both scalable as well as privacy and trust enhancing. Our two other bids with a different mix of consortia are looking good! I hope to update you on our progress in due course.
The second week of February saw your European-based staff gather in Vienna for the TIIME workshop brilliantly convened by eGov WG Chair Rainer Hoerbe. We find this a perfect venue to brainstorm longer term strategy and work through detailed plans for both the Assurance program and the R&D program, because we are surrounded by our friends from the Research and Higher Education Federations who regularly attend this conference to engage with each other and with Kantara too, one of the few (if only) industry consortia to be bestowed such honor, given the alignment of our collective ethics and ethos. There were some inspiring ideas flowing from the proceedings in the link above. In addition, I was able to take two sessions on NGI_Trust, with over a handful participants from this event showing a strong interest shown in developing proposals. A significant output from the staff gathering was to learn of the appointment of Ruth Puente as an additional Director for Kantara Initiative Europe, the Estonian incorporated non profit trade association that licences Kantara's brand and artifacts from US incorporated Kantara Initiative Inc for promotion in that region.
While on the subject of R&D, as part of KIPI, the DHS signed off on Phase 3 of Exponent's We certainly live in interesting times and March has been no exception. From the horrific tragedy in Christchurch through the findings of the Mueller investigation to the near comical farce of Brexit, this month has served up plenty to feast on. For Kantara, March has been a 100% good news month and for that I am very grateful.
Kantara's Trust Framework Operations and Assurance program continues to strengthen with major players signalling their intention to seek 3rd party assessment and approval of their solutions to Kantara's 'NIST 800-63-3 Class of Approval'. To that end it was great to see the Board approve Swedish company Seadot as an accredited assessor.
The 3rd week of March saw the DHS Showcase finally take place in Washington DC after its initial postponement during the Federal shutdown in January. Our KIPI performers, Exponent with its MOB4PACS project using smartphones as PIV cards with NFC and BLE. This is the final phase of this project which sees this fantastic technology ready itself for and Lockstep with its ValidIDy attribute capsules demonstrated their features and picked up further interest, as they ready themselves for partnering and commercialization.
On the community side of the house:
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Please join me in welcoming new organizational members the Lush Group and Seadot as well as individual contributor Lisa LeVasseurduring March.
And welcome back renewing members in February two New Zealand organizations Sphere Identity and the Department of Internal Affairs, as well as long-serving Board member, the Internet Society and individuals contributors Mary Hodder and John Wunderlich. A March. A great big thank you to you all for continuing your support of Kantara.
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Program, Work Group and Discussion Group Updates:
You can always keep up with the latest news from the Work and Discussion Groups directly on the Leadership Council's Blog. See the list of public groups here.
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