Not more than 2 weeks ago, I have been around @ CISCO Live event in Milan, the industry’s premier education and training workshop.
Lazy walking around, I had a very interesting coffee with Giuseppe Paternò (aka Gippa): he was there on the behalf of Canonical (he was in charge to talk about OpenStack), but really our chat turn immediately on security matter.
Courtesy of zebble on flickr – http://www.flickr.com/photos/zebble/6786151/
Security is probably one of the most important issue of these times, – among others, 2013 GNOME FoG campaign has been focused on security – and I think protection of (personal and corporate) data is “the” challenge of next ones.
As user, protection of my digital life is something I really worry about, but if I was a company… OH MY GOSH! Social networks, weak passwords, multiple devices, spyware, malware, negligence or simply oversight (geniuses are known to be differently focused… 🙂 ) how many doors would you like to open? How many temptations for a a blackhat?
What I really like in Giuseppe words has been the effort to make available for everyone his long lasting experience in FLOSS environment to provide a simple solution, called SecurePass.
SecurePass is a SaaS identity and access management backed by strong authentication and Single Sign On. Giuseppe explained me that the idea behind is that each web app and Linux system in the cloud has its own user base, therefore there is no central point of user management and no single way to enforce security policies. SecurePass targets Cloud apps and networks devices, and is currently using open protocols such as RADIUS, CAS, LDAP.
It is easy to integrate in Ubuntu: Luca Perencin, leader of the Ubuntu Users Official Group on LinkedIn, wrote an interesting article about it.
But Giuseppe wanted even more in the new release: he said he wanted it to be easy for developers to integrate it into their core framework, hence the implementation of new APIs and the group management.
Next release is codenamed Dreamliner, and that makes sense , because of Gippa’s great passion for flight: he has a private pilot licence… and he promised me a tour on a Diamond Aircraft DA40NG if I spread the word!!!
Just kidding of course, but this is my way to help the project – and, definitely, a friend.
The beta is there to help Giuseppe in driving SecurePass to something that is useful to both developers and users. New libraries are released as Open Source on GitHub and he’s looking for feedback and patches. Many heads are better then one, so please consider to join the free beta testing: for more info take a look at https://beta.secure-pass.net
My technical knowledge is too poor to allow me to assess a value, but if one of you will leave an opinion, I’ll be happy to read and share!
Happy testing!
Code is Poetry 