For those of you who haven’t gotten on our address list yet, I’m posting our holiday greeting card here for your viewing pleasure. And, if you’re like me and haven’t gone out to get your own cards yet, you still have time to send this one to your friends. However, I recommend you send it to those who “get” identity.

12 Days of Identity

(I went ahead and cut to the last verse to spare you the repetition of the first eleven verses!)

On the first day of Identity my true love sent to me:
12 Bloggers Blogging
11 Pipers Provisioning
10 Quiet Help Desks
9 Platforms Interoperating
8 Auditors Auditing
7 Continents Participating
6 Product Offerings
5 Hackers Blocked
4 Ever Open (and Secure)
3 Products Launched
2 Billion Directory Entries
and One Single Sign-on for Me

I'll be back on January 9th, so, until then, I wish you all a fabulous holiday break!

I wanted to take a minute to respond to Dave Kearns' most recent newsletter.

First, our move to make all Sun enterprise software, including identity management, available through a no-cost download is potentially a market-changing move - as we put our identity products out there for prospective customers to try and use. My belief is that it's time for identity to become an inherent service on our networks and getting the software into the hands of users will help drive and speed adoption. This is good for Sun because as more and more people try our software, we believe they will ultimately buy from us. It's good for customers because this puts identity management solutions in their hands today so they can start figuring out how to best apply them. What do you think?

Now, onto identity theft. Here are some comments I made to Dave:

Reading your newsletter, I could draw the conclusion that Sun was trying to spur on fear with our survey and that was not at all the intent of our announcement. The conclusions we reached showed that consumers are doing smart things like changing and updating their passwords and are willing to take action if their personal information is mishandled. The buying power, and leaving power, is clearly with consumers. That's not fear, that's empowerment.

As my quote said in the press release:

"It's heartening to see that overall awareness of identity theft is quite high and that many Americans are taking basic steps to protect themselves," said Gates. "Consumers should continue to step up their vigilance in 2006 by only giving their Social Security Number to trusted parties and they should shred all discarded documents with personal data on them. However, companies also need to mitigate the threat of identity theft by taking all possible steps to ensure the security of their corporate data."

My mantra around identity & security is “accelerate without fear” and the last thing I would do is to promote something that drives fear. The Harris survey we did showed (in my opinion) that people are smart, they are paying attention and they are willing to move their business if their information is mishandled. That means companies, if they are to keep growing and gaining customer confidence, must take the necessary steps to protect access to private information and manage “who has access to what”.

Now I want to challenge you with something. Ask your friends what their thoughts are on identity theft. (And I do not mean the vast minority of the world that work in technology. I mean your neighbor, your cousin, your wife's best friend.) Ask them about their opinions on identity theft. I have had this conversation a lot lately with my (non tech) friends & family. Right or wrong, people believe they are more at risk for ID theft with online transactions than elsewhere. We're making progress but we still have education to do & companies still need to think more about the impact of identity on how they run their businesses.

Managing identities is something companies MUST do – Sun has just made it even easier.

Hi there. I have been out all week talking to customers in finance, government, telecommunications, airlines and others about the impact of identity on the running of their businesses. The interesting thing is that we have moved from talking about the management OF identities to the management of our business BY identity. Identity is what brings meaning and security to business transactions. We have a new white paper. This is the final draft that I wanted to share with you (before it's published on Sun.com) because it's all about this topic. This paper is the first in a series that we're putting together on the subject of Accelerating without Fear. It's focused on how identity management helps business gear up for rapid growth in the Participation Age. Let me know what you think.

I had to share this comic strip with you all, it's hilarious.

As many of you know, my husband and I decided to take the TV out of our home five years ago. Best decision we ever made! Instead of watching life go by, we’re living it, participating in it.

I challenge everyone to go a week without TV and please let me know how it goes, what you learn, what I’m missing (if anything!). Would love to hear about your experiences.