How do I know you are who you say you are? How do you know I am who I say I am?

I think that verification of online presences will become more important over the next few years. This includes all the social media. It also includes anywhere that an employee representing an organization is present online.

We will need to strike a balance for the need to have anonymous accounts and the need to know specifically who are scam calling the elderly. Most systems we have in place are too far in one direction or the other, usually towards anonymous accounts. We need a better balance.

We need the ability to prove who we are if we so chose. We need the ability to be anonymous if we want. And we need a way to limit contact with those that may not be who they say they are.

I don’t have good answers, and there are those smarter than me that are thinking about this stuff.

However, if you lead an IT department, you need to make sure that your identity management actually works and that your social media policies cover identity.