2019: January

Owned by Colin Wallis (Unlicensed)
Last updated: Feb 02, 2019 by Ken Dagg (Unlicensed)

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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I'm writing this on a cold but sunny winter's day in England. Nearly a foot of snow still covers the ground after two days of bad weather. Of course the temperatures and snow are nothing compared to the polar vortex that our community colleagues have had to endure in North America or, with knowing smiles, our Northern Europe colleagues who live with snow as part of everyday life.   

Is it just Kantara or is it everywhere? I can't recall such a turbo-start to a year. Right from the first working days in January, it has been full-on! Days are full of packed calls, proposals, meetings and interest from all corners of the world and in all aspects of our operations and community activity. 

In Europe, much of January was taken up with adding the final touches to Kantara Initiative Europe's 2019 European Union H2020 grant funded NGI_Trust project with other consortia members GEANT, Fraunhofer, Tecnalia, EFIS and EDN. This first call opened February 1st and closes April 30th. 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. It doesn't end there however. During January, Kantara Europe has been working with two other consortia to prepare bids for further grant H2020 funding. I'll keep you posted on our progress.

While on the subject of R&D, we were looking forward to seeing our two star performers in the KIPI R&D program - Lockstep's MDAV certificate capsules project re-branded as ValidIDy and Exponent's MOB4PACS project using smartphones as PIV cards with NFC and BLE - pitch their solutions at the DHS S&T Cyber Security & Innovation Showcase in Washington DC January 8-11th. Regrettably the Federal Government Shutdown put an end to that, but the good news is that it has been rescheduled for March 18-20th. Since the postponement notice came too late for international participants to change travel plans, I came to DC anyway and had hugely valuable discussions with our many friends and supporters in that city. You know who are - so thank you!

Things haven't been quiet on the Trust Framework and Assurance program either! A second organization's solution was approved under Kantara's 800-63-3 scheme. Others are working through the process while still others are giving the idea consideration. An interesting dynamic that can play out (and did so this month) is when the public sector steps back (in this case the furlough through much of December and January and the TFS part of the GSA FICAM program increasingly moribund), the private sector steps up and gets on with it. We have also had enquiries from two organizations interested in bringing their schemes to Kantara to operate. I'll keep you up to date as they progress.

Of the work groups, the Consent & Information Sharing and UMA groups continued to attract the most attention as they plan their consent receipt interoperability demo and submission to IETF respectively. The Identity Assurance Work Group is building its call attendances back up as the the cycle of document revisions sets the baseline for additional work in 2019. The short life ID Proofing and Verification Discussion Group, which has enjoyed high call attendance, has a really strong set of use cases with which to report back to the Study Period on the topic at ISO SC27 Working Group 5 in Tel Aviv in April. If you hurry there's still time to get yours in. 

We have been busy getting Kantara community discounts and planning our participation at Conferences and Events too. Of course our participation is your participation. A big shout-out of thanks to those members who submitted Kantara related proposals to TIIME in Vienna, KNOW in Las Vegas, the European Identity Conference in Munich and Idenitiverse in Washington DC all of which are taking place in these coming months. If you are attending the EIC in Munich in May, please make sure you arrive a day early and register here for the Kantara Members Plenary on Monday May 13th, the day before the Kantara pre-conference workshop and the event opening just after.

'I've really got to join Kantara'  must have been a New Year's Resolution for some, because as with all other aspects of Kantara activity, Membership has seen a significant uptick. A big welcome to new members Transmute, Gluu (stepping up from 2 individual memberships), Excelsior Security Solutions, Michael Zygma and Parker Crockford. As well, a big welcome back to Airside Mobile and GEANT who renewed their memberships in January! 

February? 'Bring it on' I say (wink). 

As I previewed 2019, at the end of last year, I saw that it marks Kantara's 10th anniversary (June 17, 2009 to be precise). You will see our 10th Anniversary logo adorning a range of our artifacts over the course of the year. Whether you have been in the Kantara community right from the beginning, or just joined us recently, we want to know what you think about us - both where we do well and where we could do better. Please spend a few minutes answering these 10 multi-choice questions in our annual member survey. https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/KI_community_feedback

Kind Regards,

Colin

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