Open Source Initiative to Give People More Control Over Their Personal Online Information

Open Source Initiative to Give People More Control Over Their Personal Online Information

IBM, Novell and Parity Communications today announced that they are contributing code to an open source initiative — code-named “Project Higgins” — that will spawn a new generation of security software, giving people more control over their personal online identity information. Project Higgins builds upon a concept developed by Harvard Law School’s Berkman Center for Internet & Society.

Project Higgins – which is being managed by the Eclipse open source foundation — is developing software for “user-centric” identity management, an emerging trend in security software. It enables individuals to actively manage and control their online personal information, such as bank account, telephone and credit card numbers, or medical and employment records — rather than institutions managing that information as they do today. People will decide what information they want shared with trusted online websites that use the software.

This is the first user-centric identity management effort to follow the open source software model, where hundreds of thousands of developers contribute — and continually drive improvements through collaborative innovation. Being an open source effort, Higgins will support any computer running Linux, Windows or any operating system, and will support any identity management system.

Read the complete Press Release