Mozilla Releases New Persona Beta

We all use them and find them to be an inconvenience. “Them” are passwords. Let’s face it: for years they’ve been the bane of efficiency in our communal existence, as well as a source of consternation for enterprise IT people who spend way too much time trying to help those with password (and I will be kind here) challenges.

Indeed, getting rid of the need for passwords while maintaining security and authentication has been an industry quest for quite some time. Solutions and proposed solutions ranging from standards-based approaches like the new FIDO Alliance, to a raft of proprietary ones, are either in the works or already being implemented. 

Well, there’s great news on this front if you’re a user of the popular Mozilla (News - Alert) browser.

 In an online posting from the Mozilla Identity team, the good folks from Mozilla have announced that Persona, Mozilla’s easy and safe way to log into your favorite websites, is now in Beta 2.  As the team says, “The goal of Persona is simple: we want to eliminate passwords on the Web…This release, packed with performance improvements and new features, brings us another big step closer to that goal. In particular, we’ve made it easy for users with existing Web accounts to log in without creating a new account or password. This brings secure login within two clicks for hundreds of millions of users worldwide, regardless of whether they’re on a desktop, tablet, or mobile phone.”

The Mozilla crew is clearly proud of their achievements. Not only do they mention that Born This Way Foundation, Firebase and the Eclipse Foundation have already implemented it; they also have provided an insightful video on it.



Try it...you'll like it

As Mozilla points out in the video and its blog, the most important feature of Persona Beta 2 is Identity Bridging. This is where users can log into Persona-supporting websites with their existing accounts. We’re starting with yahoo.com, and you can take it for a test drive at 123done.org: click “Sign in,” enter your yahoo.com e-mail address, and go!

Websites that use Persona benefit from this improvement immediately: hundreds of millions of Web users are now ready to log in with just a few clicks. Users have complete choice and a simple flow; click one login button and select your preferred e-mail address. Identity Bridging kicks in dynamically based on the user’s chosen e-mail address.

Benefits of the latest version of Persona include:

• The Mozilla button and popup load twice as fast
• Identity Bidging means any domain can become a Persona Identity Provider so users can reuse their existing accounts on any site that uses Persona.
• There is built-in support for Firefox OS, and Persona has been made much faster on all mobile devices.

As the posting notes, if you want more technical details on Identity Bridging, they’re detailed on the Mozilla Hacks blog, and in a detailed Q&A with Lead Engineer Lloyd Hilaiel.

If nothing else, this beta ups the browser arms race. Ease of use along with security are market drivers, and having a useful and secure way of browsing without worrying about all aspects of using your identity is definitely an attraction. And, you also from a marketing perspective have to like the Mozilla pitch: “Together, in the open, we will continue to build a login system that is better: Better for users, better for web sites, and better for the Web.”

The subject of identity and strong authentication are going to be front and center at the TMC (News - Alert) event, SecureIT 2013: Protecting Your Enterprise in a BYOD World. It is being held July 23, 2013 at the Kimmel Center on the NYU campus in New York City. We hope you can join us to learn more about Identity and a host of other important security matters that the BYOD revolution has created for enterprises.