Trevor Power » OpenID http://blog.trevorpower.com Software development and other thoughts Fri, 20 Aug 2010 07:33:51 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.8.6 en hourly 1 OpenId and Rabo Bank http://blog.trevorpower.com/index.php/openid-and-rabo-bank/ http://blog.trevorpower.com/index.php/openid-and-rabo-bank/#comments Tue, 30 Sep 2008 20:37:00 +0000 trevorpower http://trevorpower.com/blog/?p=17

No, you can’t log into your Rabo Bank account using an OpenID, it is feasable but I suspect it is a few years away.

I am currently implementing OpenID support (as a relying party) to a website I am working on and have become a big fan of the protocol. I was thinking about the different ways that OpenID providers could use to authenticate you such as password, phone-call etc…

It then struck me, when logging into Rabo they use a very secure authentication system whereby each user has a special device called a digipass that must be used when logging in. It is like a small calculator but it’s basically a random number generator. As it requires a PIN to operate, logging in becomes a two factor authentication system.

They already use a different number of steps and hence a different level of security depending on the transaction type (login, money transfer, large money transfer) so they could easily let the user decide on the level of security they are comfortable with.
They have a big head-start on many of the big openID providers even Microsoft and Google because they have a user base that already have their hands on the digipass. It would be hard for a standalone OpenID provider to give away free gadgets.
In the current economic climate, I’m sure banks have bigger things to worry about but such a feature would be easy to implement and offer their users a bonus feature for banking with them.
But, unless you are hyper paranoid the only thing I can think of that you would like that much security for is an online bank…
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