A great writer once wrote:

To be, or not to be: that is the question

There is of course no greater irony that the identity of the writer of these words is in fact in question. Whether we are or whether we are not depends now, and has always depended on the identity reliability. So did Shakespeare really write these words? Many articles on this question have already been written; I am not going to write another one. These days a simple google query ‘shakespeare identity’ will reveal millions of webpages, all in one extent or another questioning the true identity of the writer of these famous words.

So what does ‘identity’ mean? The most appropriate Merriam Webster dictionary entry may be:

2. the distinguishing character or personality of an individual

Ofcourse a ‘personality’ is a set of distinguishing characteristics by itself but I’ll forgive Merriam Webster this oversight and state simply that:

An identity is a finite set of attributes belonging to an entity that make the entity uniquely identifiable.

I specifically use ‘entity’ here because I feel that not only individuals have an identity. In fact, everything has an identity, although not always a unique identity, depending on the number of attributes we agree on. As individuals we appreciate and value our identity to be unique. In the case of Shakespeare and in the modern days of digital attributes added to our individuality however, the identity becomes more easily altered, stolen or obscured. Let us have a look of some of the old and some of the newer attributes that define an entity. In this case we will look specifically at a human entity.

Social Networks

Large ‘social’ websites such as Facebook, Twitter and Myspace let us ‘share’ things such as opinions and photographs with those we believe to be our friends. From a security point of view this is often said not to be a great thing to do as it gives away aspects of our identity that could be used by third parties to identify themselves to be us. While this is a valid observation of course, we always share information with others around us that makes us identifiable to those others; this is what defines our identity after all. Had Shakespeare not written his wonderful writings we would have never come to know him as Shakespeare!

So sharing information about ourselves online is really not much different than sharing information about ourselves offline. This appears to be more clear to young people than it is to older people. Younger people nowadays more often use the online identity as an extension of their offline identity while older people frequently think about it as something novel, sometimes fun, but most often pointless. I would like to try and make a point that:

• Identity Management becomes easier, not harder, when more information is shared online.

Many security related colleagues will probably disagree but ask yourselves this: Had Shakespeare had Facebook and posted his writings online, would there be any question today about whether he really wrote his great writings?