Microsoft buys Privacy Management Company Credentica for Undisclosed Sum

David Heath
Sunday, 09 March 2008 16:49

Your IT - Home IT

Last week, Canadian privacy company Credentica was purchased by Microsoft.  Credentica is a world-leader in the development of reduced-leakage personal data repositories.

Imagine being able to prove you have more money than (the mythical) Alice without either of you having to reveal your net worth.  This is known as the millionaire’s problem, a technical description of the solution is here. 

In the general case, society has been seeking a leak-free solution to private data stores for a very long time – Credentica has exactly that; hence Microsoft’s interest.  And money.

If you read the proproco link, you’ll realise that the generic solution is a rather complex application of Public Key Infrastructure (PKI), hence the extended interval between the implementation of PKI and the first realistic implementation of privacy based on it.

There have been many attempts at solutions, primarily relying on consumer pressure to force solution providers to address privacy.  To no avail.  Instead, Credentica created a software developers kit (SDK) called U-Prove to easily permit manufacturers to inculcate the solution into their products.  This has led to some significant interest in the inventor of the technology, Stefan Brands and his company.

Only a couple of few weeks ago, Bruce Schneier wrote about the company on his blog and suggested that although a great idea, he couldn’t see a viable business model, although he hoped to be proven wrong.  Consider this proof of being wrong!

Kim Cameron Chief architect of identity and access at Microsoft (and Brands’ new boss) has his own blog and commented there that “U-Prove is the equivalent in the privacy world of RSA in the security space.”

This is an exciting new time in the development of privacy – probably the first time that a major company has done more than pay lip-service.  We can only hope that the stated promises to include other developers, other solutions, will in fact be realised.