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Greetings folks

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Hello everyone,

Welcome to 2018!  As the Holidays fade from near term memory, everywhere I look across the Kantara community, I see activities pushing ahead with business plans and new initiatives.  

January heralds the start of Kantara's year as it does for many.  That involves planning and executing tactics to support the strategic and business objectives that Kantara's leadership has set itself. The year looks busy at the outset, even before any ad hoc opportunities that might arise throughout the year are considered.

We moved Kantara's first own-brand International Privacy Summit to May 22nd for a variety of reasons, and we will release further details over the coming weeks. That's GDPR enforcement week, so you can be sure it's on the agenda! 

We are coalescing around the Kuppinger Cole hosted European Identity & Cloud Conference in Munich for a combined Kantara AGM and European members plenary on Monday May 14th during the day, to give you all enough time to refresh, reset and attend the Blockchain ID Innovation night, and prior to Kantara's own pre-conference workshop the following morning Tuesday 15th that curtain-raises the formal opening of the conference.

We are looking for Kantara member sponsors and a venue in the Munich area.  If your organization can help on either or both of these, please Contact Us.

Near term, you'll see fellow Kataraians at the KNOW identity conference in Washington DC March 26 - 28, on a Kantara panel slated for Monday March 26th 2.40pm comprising members Mary Hodder, Scott Shorter, Tracy Hulver, Andrew Hughes moderated by myself, where we will discuss the topic 'Identity Service Provider Certification: Who cares anyway?'.  If you're attending, please come along and join in on the conversation. 

Just coming up in this first full week in February, Kantara will be participating in the TIIME workshop hosted by Kantara's own eGov WG Chair Rainer Hoerbe. We get together with our Higher Ed colleagues and interested others, as we work through identity related topics at the bleeding edge as well as refinements at the operational edge of the community. Wednesday 21st February heralds the first work-focussed meeting of the Consent Management Systems best practice WG, so if you have signed the Group Participation Agreement (GPA) or intend to, please do so as soon as possible so as to not miss out on anything. Later Greetings folks

I start this as the 'beast from the east' weather bomb blasts through the UK, while our members in Austrlalia and New Zealand bask in the sunshine of one of the best summers for years (a little too hot in Australia which produces those deadly bushfires).

February has seen an unprecedented level of downloads from our Reports and Recommendations web repository.  Downloads are more than double year on year, primarily due to the strong reporting of our Blockchain Smart Contracts Report from mainstream media. While you heard it here first several months ago and also by following @kantaranews on Twitter, we re-ran the story again early in February. In just a 3 day period during the month we hit 118 downloads.  Good download numbers were posted by UMA 2.0 and Consent Receipt as well, since these tools help with GDPR compliance. With enforcement just over 3 months away, organizations the world over that have digital relationships with EU citizens are looking for products and services to help them meet the deadline.  February has been a great month for new memberships too, and we have pleasure in welcoming DataFund from Denmark, Reliable Identities from the US and Sphere Identity from New Zealand.

We started the first full week in the month at the TIIME workshop in Vienna. This event really helps Kantara value its engagement with the Higher Ed community. I believe that Kantara is the only non-profit in the digital identity space to sustain a relationship that results in such fantastic knowledge-sharing. The value of this knowledge sharing is how it draws others to Kantara who are eager to both soak up and extend those riches. That aside, for many attendees the highlight was the workshop dinner held under the dome in the renowned Natural History Museum in Vienna. Unforgettable grandeur and splendour. Later in the month, EEMA - Kantara's most active European liaison - is hosting hosted me in Brussels at its members Fireside, on a topic close to us all - the future of identity and trust.

Beyond planning events, much of January was taken up with meeting new and prospective members, participating and speaking. 

First and foremost, a warm welcome to Kantara's newest member Trunomi - known to many of you already - as a fast growing successful company in the personal data space and interested to contribute to and consume Kantara's consent-related artefacts as they are developed and monetized.  Elsewhere in the month I caught up with several members and associates at the inaugural meeting of the UK Conservative Party's Science and Technology Forum digital identity working group meeting. And both Kantara IRM WG Chair Sal D'Agostino and I were invited onto respective panels in New York and London by the good folks at Fintech start-up Rainmaking.io. Great conversations and great opportunities were to be had, to make folks aware of your highly valued efforts in developing specifications for industry adoption and conformity assesssment schemes for industry Trust Framework operations. 

We also opened our 2018 press release salvo with more Trust Framework news, this time announcing the MOU between the US IDESG and Kantara (its first and most active liaison partner) whereby Kantara approved and Trust Marked identity and credential service providers are 'pre-checked' for the majority of IDESG's baseline requirements of its IDentity Ecosystem Framework, thereby adding extra benefits to being approved under the Kantara Trust Framework 'classic' scheme.  See the press release here.    

Meanwhile, with the generous support of ID.me for supplying editing resources, Kantara is nearly ready to release Three speakers graced us with their perspectives. The stand-out presenter for me being Bart Preneel from Leuven University. His presentation was based on a thought provoking premise that, in the future, security and privacy will turn full circle to be better maintained and assured on local devices rather than cloud based networked services.  

The early months of the year give me a great opportunity to acknowledge and thank selected member organizations for their support as I undertake my semi-annual round of 1:1 calls with Directors and Trust Marked Service Providers and Assessors.  These folks provide much of the fuel for the monetized engine room of the organization that allows many of you reading this to enjoy the benefits of low barriers to participation in Kantara's working groups and discussion groups, either through their Directors dues or support of Kantara's 'raison d'etre' - the Trust Framework Operations program.  As the only global 'non pay to play' consortium in our industry, and in support of our ethics based and mission-led culture, we should remember just how hard a business model it is to operate. It’s a model that Kantara's contemporaries won't even try. Without the Directors, Members, Sponsors and Trust Framework participants stepping up to the plate, Kantara would not exist. It's fitting then that in OWI's recent 'top 100 Influencers in Identity', 14 of them were Kantara members.  See them here in Kantara's own press release. Speaking of members, have you completed the Member Survey? Tell us what you would like Kantara to do in 2018 and beyond. 

Meanwhile, look out for new deliverables coming out of our work groups. The members-only release of the Service Assessment Criteria for the NIST SP 800-63-3 Guidelines for Digital Identity, for identity & credential service providers whose solutions are utilized by relying parties online. Kantara is extending the scope of Kantara's Trust Framework Operations Program with this foundational piece of new work. As you browse the new content on that link, please take our Survey regarding your current or planned compliance with Identity Management related standards.  Help us to help you!

And on that note, have you completed the Member Survey? Like all Kantara surveys it is short and to the point. We listen to your feedback and act on it, which is why you see Kantara's activities change and remix from year to year. Tell us what you would like Kantara to do in 2018 and beyond. 

Onwards!is imminent. Thanks again to ID.me for supplying editing resources. And UMA Legal, the sub group of UMA has produced a ground-breaking draft report that adds the 'B' (business) and the 'L' (legal) to the 'T' (technical) that comprises the essence of the UMA specification.  

If your organization has something it wants to accomplish, please don’t hesitate to contact me to explore how you can fund work or discussion group activities.

'Spring forward!'

Kind Regards,

Colin

Around the Houses:

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Program, Work Group and Discussion Group Updates:

  • Wednesday 21st February: first work-focussed meeting of the Consent Consent Management Systems best practice WG has a fantastic turnout for its opening calls. Thank you sponsors iWelcome and digi.me. The Kantara community salutes you for your support. 

  • You can always keep up with the latest news from the Work Group and Discussion Groups directly off the Leadership Council's Blog.

  • Join them here
  • Kantara'sConsent Receipt v1.1 has completed its public review and the working group are discussion your submitted comments.  

  • @UMAWG has released the UMA 2.0 specifications into formal publication. Kantara's UMA protocol is ranked 2nd in Kuppinger Cole's top 10 trends for 2018. And 1st on Kuppinger Cole's list? None other than Kantara's Consent Receipt.  

  • See all of  is being prepared for publication just in time for those last minute preparations for GDPR! 

  • As always our Specifications, Recommendations and Reports here and awaiting your are available for download from our Reports and Recommendations web repository.   As always, if you have a query or question, staff    

  • Not sure where to find things? Staff are only too willing to assist.  Contact them via email.

Events: See them all here!