We’re repeatedly seeing more and more accounts of accounts being hacked and passwords being stolen across the web.  Take a look at the recent Gawker hack and all their hashed passwords being posted to torrent sites.  People should also realize that there are many lists out there that take millions of common passwords and run them through all the standard hashing algorithms.  This allows a hacker to quickly search through a list of hashed passwords and come up with the actual password you’re using.  How many of us use this same password across multiple sites, or a very similar variant of the same password.

A few years ago I envisioned what the next generation OpenID platform might look like.  I’ve shared this with multiple people over the years and they all ask me why I haven’t built it yet.  I honestly just haven’t made the time so I feel like its time to give someone else the opportunity.  OpenID is great in that it allows you tohave a single strong password to authenticate you against multiple sites.  Many of you will have used Facebook Connect to go to websites and this is a very similar technology  Some of the things I noodle in the attached diagram TheNextGenOpenIDPlatform include stronger hardware based authentication devices, delegated account access, digital personas, linking of devices that can be remotely de-authorized, an analytics dashboard to find out who is using your identity and attributes, and synchronizing your attributes across all the places you go.

If there are any VCs listening I’m more than happy to start an angel round of investing and start building, I already have the team I’d use ready to go. 😉