White House Preparing National Online ID Plan

(InformationWeek) – The Obama administration is set to propose a new system for authenticating people, organizations and infrastructure on the Web. The online authentication and identity management system would be targeted at the transactional level — for example, when someone logs into their banking website or completes an online e-commerce purchase.

Making such a system effective, however, will require creating an “identity ecosystem,” backed by extensive public/private cooperation, said White House cybersecurity coordinator Howard Schmidt, delivering the opening keynote speech at the Symantec Government Symposium 2010 in Washington on Tuesday.

Obama set to unveil ‘too big to fail’ plans

The Obama administration plans to unveil on Monday a new plan for dealing with troubled financial giants, said a senior U.S. lawmaker, who also mentioned potentially big changes for the insurance industry.