Since the early-2000s Professor David Chadwick and a University of Kent team in the School of Computing have undertaken extensive research in the field of Information Systems security, resulting in the development of novel Federated Identity Management (FIM) technologies.
FIM allows users of online services to use their existing usernames and passwords, instead of having to create a new pair whenever they want to access a new online service, which could quickly cause serious password management problems. Furthermore, having to create and memorise many passwords would make users choose weak and easily crackable passwords, causing security issues. By using FIM, online users can dramatically reduce the number of passwords they need, and this would allow them to create and maintain stronger passwords.
The FIM’s introduction has been recognised by OpenStack — a community cloud project involving 135+ international leading vendors, including Lenovo, Oracle, RedHat, IBM, Rackspace, and Cisco — for accelerating and shaping the project’s federated identity system’s performance. FIM’s impact has also been acknowledged by OpenStack users for advancing their organisational security and efficiency whilst also saving significant costs.
References
[1] Chadwick, D., Siu, K., Lee, C., Fouillat, Y. and Germonville, D. (2014). “Adding Federated Identity Management to OpenStack”. Journal of Grid Computing [Online] 12:3-27. Available at: http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s10723-013-9283-2
[2] Chadwick, D. (2009). “Federated Identity Management”. In: Aldini, A., Barthe, G. and Gorrieri, R. eds. FOSAD 2008/2009. Berlin: Springer-Verlag, pp. 182-196. Available at: http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-03829-7_3.