Universal Identification

Considered as one of the top ten technologies in the world today, Universal Identification is gravely important in today's unsecured environment.

Just as one has a single national passport that is used to travel to different countries, a single id to access multitude of application and service gateways is a must.

Though proponents of multiple IDs state that, it is unsafe to have a single ID that can be hacked and then used to access multiple accounts; it is quite difficult for end users to create equally secured multiple passwords for their IDs. And most of the time, the user ends up assigning the same password to the multiple ids.

This thought process went into the development of the identification and authentication system of NetAlter.

NetAlter offers the end user a choice between single ID or multiple access IDs.

The single ID is the same as the one used to authenticate and access the NetAlter system. This single ID may be tagged to the computing devices system ID or to the user's biometric fingerprint. Or it could be a combination of both.

The goal here is to make sure that the operation of the NetAlter system is unique to the user and his or her computing device.

Therefore, if anyone manages to steal the user ID and password, it will still not function on a different computing device or/and user combination.

Once a user logs into the NetAlter System, it offers a secured environment from which the user can access a variety of applications and services. These may require the user to provide an access ID and password. Here NetAlter provides the user with the option to either tag their NetAlter System Access ID to the application or service or create a different Access ID for the same.

In either case, the access to the application or service is internally tagged to the NetAlter System ID. Though, this concept of authentication provides less mobility in terms of not being able to access the applications and services from a different computing device, it provides more robust security to the end user.

For those who require to access their applications, services and data from multiple locations using the same access ID, NetAlter offers the possibility of the same by tagging their NetAlter System Access ID to their biometric profile and authentification using a biometric device or similar other devices. Data portability is made available by offer to host the data on a web server or synchronizing data with the store in other devices.

A clear example here is that a NetAlter user wants to access his or her emails (which is stored locally on their office or home desktop) from a mobile computing device.

For this, the user has to install the NetAlter Service Browser on the mobile computing device and register the same and apply the same NetAlter System Access ID. Next, the user has to either keep the Office or home desktop (where the email folders are located) online or synchronize the email folders with an online storage service in NetAlter which is only accessed by the users NetAlter System Access ID.

The user can then log on to the mobile computing device and access the email on their home/office computer. This is an example of using the same access ID for multiple devices and applications/services.

In case the user wants to maintain multiple access ids for different devices and applications/services then too the user can access multiple resources from multiple devices by simply forming a personal network in NetAlter and providing full access to the different access IDs. This system though offering more mobility would not offer the same security protection as the single access ID.