Spotlight on Kantara Member GlobalSign

In this edition of Spotlight, we are pleased to tell readers more about GlobalSign, their unique role in IdM, and why they became Members of Kantara Initiative.
1) Why was your service/product created, and how is it providing real-world value today?  globalsign-logo
GlobalSign, founded in 1996, is a provider of identity services. As a leading Certificate Authority, we have always provided trusted identities – initially issuing SSL certificates for ecommerce transactions. Today, we provide a range of identity services for the Internet of Everything (IoE), where the ability to make secure networked connections among people, processes, data and things, will require that every “thing” have a trusted identity that can be managed. We like to call it the IoE, not IoT, because people, organizations, systems, processes and applications all need identities, not just “things.”
Our broad identity portfolio, in addition to SSL and other PKI-based services, includes identity verification, authentication, access control, single sign-on (SSO), federation and delegation services that make it easy to build and scale self-service portals and also enables tiered delegated administration of external identities. They help businesses reap the benefits of enhanced customer and partner interactions with easily deployed, yet robust e-Service solutions.
GlobalSign’s identity relationship management solutions are already in use by an impressive number of government agencies, financial institutions and enterprises for large scale applications, including telecom service providers that allow their customers to manage their own account features; by the Finnish tax bureau to provide services to millions of citizens and companies; by utility companies to provide legally required usage information to customers; and by insurance organizations, using federated identities to cross-sell services to banking customers. These organizations are saving millions of dollars in account management costs and providing higher levels of service to their customers by using GlobalSign’s technology to integrate with existing CRM solutions and enable self-registration, dynamic authentication based on transaction value, and delegated multi-tiered identity and access administration features.
2) Where is your organization envisioned to be strategically in the next 5-10 years?
GlobalSign aspires to be a leading provider of identity services for the Internet of Everything, mediating trust to enable safe commerce, communications, content delivery and community interactions for the billions of online transactions, occurring around the world at every moment. It’s a lofty mission but as we all recognize, identity is key to all trusted online transactions. We are building the solutions that will allow organizations to issue, manage and provide appropriate access rights to their networks of identities, as well as federate trusted identities. With our experience in mediating billions of trusted transactions online, we understand and can address the massive scalability that will allow us, and our customers, to extend IAM beyond individuals to all of the components that make up the IoE.
3) Why did you join Kantara Initiative?
We believe that a collaborative effort is needed to create the framework and standards for successfully managing the billions of identities and the federation capabilities that will be needed as the IoE explodes, and that the results of this effort should be made publicly available. GlobalSign heartily endorses the Kantara Initiative’s focus on developing a better trusted identity framework. Actually GlobalSign’s team has been active in the Kantara Initiative even before it began – via Ubisecure of Helsinki which Globalsign acquired in September 2014, which was a part of Kantara’s predecessor, the Liberty Alliance. Since the Kantara Initiative’s formation in 2009, Ubisecure has held leadership roles in the Kantara Initiative’s telecommunications identity and eGovernment working groups, and participated in testing programs now coordinated by Kantara Initiative to ensure interoperability and standards. Team members currently participate in the Identity of Things (IDoT) discussion group and will be joined by others in our organization, as we expand our focus on identity relationship and access management services.
4) What else should we know about your organization, the service/product, or even your own experiences?
As one of the leading certificate authorities in the world, GlobalSign has been providing trusted identities and related identity solutions since 1996. Our expertise in digital certificates at scale, our large portfolio of solutions and our vast global reach, give us a comprehensive suite of solutions for today’s identity needs as well as tomorrow’s, and a perspective that few others have. With our newly acquired Ubisecure solutions and expertise, we’re eager to ramp up our industry involvement as we help customer and partners manage identities within and beyond their organizations, and into the burgeoning Internet of Everything (IoE) opportunity.