Replies to post #182401 on Wave Systems Corp. (fka WAVXQ)

[Weby]

Don't remember if this has been posted
It's an info page from the Wave OpenID site.

Hardware-Based Identity Protection for Online Applications and Services

As online transactions increase in both number and value, knowing who is on the other side of the cloud is increasingly important. With millions of consumers engaged in web-based commerce, such as online banking, credit and debit card reconciliation and brokerage trade, criminals have upped the ante — requiring that both online service providers and consumers have a higher level of assurance telling them with whom they are actually doing business.




Breaking the Password Problem
In order for large-scale consumer authentication solutions to be effective, they must be secure, transparent and cost effective for both service providers and end users. While passwords provide a level of familiarity to consumers and are essentially free to them, they pose an increasing number of security-related problems for online service providers — as they are easily phished and pharmed from consumers. To make matters worse, most of these service providers assume a consumer's PC is compromised; therefore, it cannot be leveraged for greater security such as binding transactions to machines or lowering transaction risk scores since providers can not extend "trust" to the PC.

Trusted Platform Modules (TPM) are industry-standard, factory-installed security chips that reside within many new PC's. And, with an install base of over 300 million units, TPMs are an ideal platform to ensure both strong user and machine authentication for online services and applications — offering a high level of security and transparency without breaking the bank.

Trusted Platform Module Meets OpenID
OpenID is a free and easy way for consumers to access their favorite websites across the Internet by eliminating the need for multiple usernames across different websites, simplifying the online experience. And, while OpenID is still in its early stages, it is gaining popularity with the likes of AOL and Microsoft. Today, there is an estimated 160 million OpenID-enabled Uniform Resource Identifiers (a string of characters used to identify or name a resource on the Internet) with thousands of websites supporting OpenID logins.