Things I read today that I found interesting and worthy of comment August 5th:

• Authenticators back in stock at the Blizzard store – LOL! Just mentioned the Bliz Authenticator in my last comment on the state of cloud computing security and here is an article about them being back in stock. I need to see if I can easily switch to Mobile Authenticator from my current key fob.
• The Cloud Isn't Safe?! (Or Did Black Hat Just Scare Us?) – Good article that ends in a solid and I believe, accurate analysis of the state of cloud computing. Bottom line is that there are vulnerabilities everywhere that humans setup and run machines. To think that your large IT team is doing better than the large Amazon or other service provider of choice seems a bit naive to me. The daily dose of "organization has X million user's data compromised" bears this out.

  I do take issue with one element of the Password section. Certainly I agree that single factor password systems need to die. Certainly users are resistant to complexity and "extra steps", but are they really? For applications that contain data, items (real or virtual) or even real money which customers care about, they repeatedly show up for the stronger authentication when offered. If you tried for months to get a Blizzard Authenticator for $6.50, but couldn't because they were sold out, then you know what I mean. The real problem is that users are resistant to having to do have "extra steps" that differ from site to site.

  Of course this is the holy grail of online identity, to be the entity that issues THE CREDENTIAL for use across everything. Remember Microsoft Hailstorm that became a gimped Passport that is now just another silo'd ID used at MS sites? OpenID, InfoCards and several initiatives are at work trying to at least be the basis upon which THE CREDENTIAL may be issued. Of course THE CREDENTIAL in this age of phishing, pharming, trojans, etc. must be a strong credential. It will be interesting to see what technology and which IDPs (ID Providers) win the day.

• Vonage Churning Subscribers, Stomachs – Though I know folks even in my own family that have switched to Vonage and are generally happy. This entire concept has always made me leary. For one thing I've never liked the idea of having all my communications options in one basket. "The internet is down" is still heard too often throughout my house and I consider my cable modem very reliable, but it suffers the occasional blip ranging from seconds to minutes over the course of a month. I'd be very unhappy to be losing not only my online data connectivity, but voice in the midst of any of the business calls I have throughout the week.

  I also rely on my phone for connectivity to items in my house such as my security system. Sure, I have backup wireless connection too, since wires are easy to cut, but still POPS (plain ol' phone service) is well tested, reliable and works in power outages unlike my cable modem.

  My main phone is my cell phone and indeed that is the only number anyone has for me that I want to actually contact me. My home phone doesn't ring anywhere and consequently that's the number I give anyone I don't want to hear from or who might be selling that to folks I definitely don't want to hear from.

  With the ever-growing adoption of cell phones as the primary phone, the growing adoption of smartphones and the emergence of alternate communication services such as Skype and Google Voice, Vonage and its brethren seem like a transitional offering that may have already peaked. Perhaps Vonage should widen its offerings into the Google Voice direction so can gather those that transition beyond their current offering?