I spend a lot of my time thinking about Vidoop’s role in finding out what the Internet will look like when everyone has corporate grade authentication. From day one we have envisioned our core application working in conjunction with third party strong authentication systems like hardware tokens. We built our own SMS and voice gateways, for myVidoop.com, that provide out of band code delivery to satisfy our own multi-factor requirement. Of course our technology can work just as easily with any other type of strong authentication like hardware tokens or smart cards. In a discussion I recently had with our CTO, Scott Blomquist, we came to the conclusion that our role in finding out what the Internet will look like when everyone has corporate grade authentication is pretty clear. We intend to be the Universal Strong Authentication Enabler.

In almost every consumer web situation, the reason for lack of stronger authentication comes down to two things: cost and scale. Whereas the cost of deploying stronger authentication (purchase cost, development, customer support, and maintenance) has always been prohibitive, Vidoop can eliminate cost from the equation. I have really gotten to thinking about the possibilities for this as I have watched other companies attempt to deploy corporate grade authentication to protect their users. VeriSign has a commendable vision for their VIP (VeriSign Identity Protection) Authentication Service. An early partnership with Ebay/Paypal (the sole partner/customer?) has certainly gotten them data about the potential of such efforts. Two questions instantly come to mind regarding that effort. What is the long term strategy? And how are users responding? It seems to me that a long term solution is something that is available to every user as a standard part of their experience. And a successful solution has to bring obvious value and a positive experience to the end user.

Data from these early efforts is extremely important since we are marching in a new direction as far as authentication security is concerned. In the corporate world, if your company’s policy dictates the use of hardware tokens, you pretty much don’t have a choice. But on the web, life is all about choice. If a user doesn’t like the way you are doing it, they move to another service. That is why it is so important to make the value proposition (for sites to implement and users to use) clear, simple and universal.

At Vidoop, one of our goals is to offer total Identity/Stronger Authentication solutions via myVidoop.com (using OpenID, among other protocols) to all websites. Another is to provide large consumer sites such as Google, Microsoft, Yahoo, AOL, Baidu, etc… with stronger authentication as well. These companies can simply replace the “what you know” component (almost always passwords or PINs) with the Vidoop Advertising supported grid to eliminate or subsidize the cost of the second factor (see multi-factor authentication). In some instances this can even become a profit center.

For large consumer sites, such as those listed above, the advertising version of this model works like this: Vidoop provides the executable grid authentication application (Vidoop Secure w/ Ads, we build and test versions for every major OS and technology stack) that runs in their environment (app can be distributed, load-balanced, etc…). The company simply integrates this app with their existing authentication infrastructure. All we do is supply the image (advertising) content and they in exchange upload viewing related data to us (how often each image was shown, mouse-over, click-through, and non-identifying demographic info). Most importantly Vidoop does not have access to private information about the company’s users. It’s pretty simple, you keep your users, and we help you provide stronger authentication, which equals a better user experience. And then we send you a check every month. All at zero cost.

Vidoop = Universal Strong Authentication Enabler