Mozilla Persona: Future of Authentication?

While doing research for a new analysis of modern authentication last week, I discovered that Mozilla had released the beta distribution of Persona, a new authentication system Mozilla describes as "an easy way to sign in to a website." I become so enamored with Persona that I figured that it deserved a quick posting rather than get buried into an analytical perspective that will not look too favorably on modern authentication mechanisms. Consider yourself teased.

This posting introduces Persona as an authentication mechanism, discusses the advantages that organizations and individuals could gain from using Persona, and some of the new vulnerabilities that they should consider before using Persona.