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Clickshare aims to ease the online experience

By Wayland Hancock
Network World Technology Executive Newsletter, 10/28/02

Why has Internet commerce failed to meet the expectations of so many forecasters? There's no doubt that the dot-com bubble and the slow economy have played a big part, but there are still many barriers to conducting business on the Internet. Areas that need the most work are convenience, security and confidentiality. Federated identity technology is emerging as a new, cost-reducing flexible-access infrastructure that will make it easier for users and business to access Web services and enhance security and confidentiality.

You've undoubtedly heard of different groups like the Liberty Alliance Project and Microsoft's .Net Passport group that are working independently on federated identity solutions.

It seems likely that the interoperable solutions each is developing will not be mutually exclusive. You should also know that there are other similar projects whose technologies are equally applicable to the solutions from the Liberty Alliance and Microsoft.

In this newsletter, we'll give you some general information about federated identity technology, as well as some specifics about Clickshare - an interoperable federated identity and authorization technology that could benefit the Liberty Alliance Project, .Net Passport, and others.

Federated identity technology provides the infrastructure necessary to allow a user to sign-on once, and visit multiple Web sites without having to go through the authentication or authorization process again. The initial sign-on and maintenance of privacy and preferences can be handled different ways.

A trusted third party could manage it, or members of commerce networks (supply chain management, retail networks, etc.,) might prefer each member to maintain control over their own customer information, protecting full disclosure of the profile from other members of the network, while still validating their identity and their permissions.

This single sign-on approach creates a federated identity that could make it easy for consumers to do business on multiple public Web sites without passing around personal information.

The technology and infrastructure allow a user to register with their site of choice, and then access multiple sites after signing on a single time. This integrated access control technology could be applied not only to public Web sites, but also to intranets, extranets and multiple-use portals. It can be used many different ways. Examples include authorization management for sensitive medical and legal records, Web site audience type measurement (without disclosing detailed information), control and metering of downloadable digital multimedia, and secure instant messaging - just to mention a few.

The technology allows access not only from computers, but also from other devices like cell phones and PDAs. A collaborative infrastructure like this is used today to facilitate stock exchange markets, and new federated identity technology could expand this type of infrastructure to many other uses.

Widespread use of such technology would reduce operational costs of maintaining multiple user passwords across multiple applications, and would make data more secure. The technology makes it easier for businesses to access Web services, enables the creation of trading networks with external partners, as well as enabling document and data-sharing networks. It leverages customer relationships across multiple affiliated sites. It can also create new commercial opportunities. Properly implemented, the technology makes it possible for companies to extend their customer relationships and share them among external trading partners and suppliers without losing them. There are also many other uses, like loyalty marketing programs.

Clickshare Service licenses a specific patent-pending interoperable federated identity and authorization technology that could benefit all the players in this field. Clickshare technology includes an authentication and logging service, and supporting infrastructure. Users have an account with a single Web site, and Clickshare's protocol transfers the home-base authentication to other Web sites in the Clickshare network that users visit.

This allows a consumer to have one account at a most-trusted home-base Web site, and purchase from other Web sites - with a single username and password sign-on, and a single statement. The home-base Web site is the Clickshare Service Provider for the other independent sites in the network, and may be an ISP, portal, wireless provider, telco, bank, association, retailer, newspaper, or specialty publisher. It allows access control by the consumer, since the user determines which site to use as the home-base site. This way, the user does not pass around credit card numbers or personal information but still can buy quickly, easily and securely with charges billed to one account. The system also avoids concentration of user enrollment data in a central database.

Clickshare's infrastructure handles the interaction among the participating Web sites. The Clickshare back-end serves as a proxy for authentication and verification of the consumer, seamlessly forwarding the authentication of the home-base Web site's users across the network to other participating sites. It logs the activity of users at other sites, using a one-time alphanumeric key instead of a name or identifying number of the consumer. The most-trusted home-base site, with which the consumer has registered, is the only site that can map this key to an identified user. Although Clickshare confirms to other sites that the user is unique, the system does not disclose the user's identity. Thus, privacy, anonymity, and security are preserved.

The system can be used for selling or reselling various products and services including software, multimedia, video, music and text. Clickshare is currently deployed in the newspaper industry and other specialty markets (see: sites.clickshare.com/ for a list of some of the partner Web sites).

Besides federated identity with a single sign-in, Clickshare provides participating sites with customizable user-registration services and subscription or per-item billing for content, for items costing as little as 10 cents each. Clickshare allows a user's newspaper or other participating partner to be its home-base Web site for billing and maintenance of personal information about its relationship with the user. The user's home-base site can help the user find and pay for information from multiple other sources. This enhances existing customer relationships, rather than facilitating a shift to another source. Clickshare calls this "distributed customer management." It licenses its technology free to these content-owning sites, making money by taking a small cut of each sale it facilitates.

With its unique exchange architecture, Clickshare provides consumers with many of the benefits that other organizations have worked on, including: Web site access control, user profile maintenance, single sign-on for multiple sites, stronger security, online purchase tracking, multiple credit card and shipping address management, and management of customized services.

In addition, with distributed customer management, Clickshare allows the home-base site to preserve and enhance its relationship with its customer, rather than forcing the sharing of its customer information with other members of the network. Clickshare creates new wholesale and retail relationships among the parties, and provides the capability for dynamic pricing, bundling of transactions, and privacy-protected demographics. It also enables new types of transactions such as content on demand, point of sales purchases, loyalty programs, etc.

This technology can be deployed to customers in three major market sectors: business-to-business, business-to-consumer and enterprise. Markets that could benefit the most include: retail, financial, healthcare, education, telecom, wireless (mobile commerce), travel, manufacturing, automotive, multimedia content (publishing), and enterprise organizations with multiple divisions. The unique thing about the Clickshare technology is that it provides a way for affiliated network sites to share user authentication tasks without sharing private customer data. It has the potential of creating a digital marketplace where peers have equal rights, and no one dominates.

Wayland Hancock is business technology editor at Currid & Company, a Houston IT assessment company (you can reach him by e-mail at hancock@currid.com). Learn more about Currid & Company at www.currid.com