Authentication from a user's own PC presents a higher level of confidence than that same user logging on from, for example, an Internet café in Istanbul, said Bregman. "In the enterprise, it's either you or it's not. In the broad Internet world, it's how confident am I that it's you," he said.

Rather than charging consumers for the identity management service, the clearinghouse would likely function similar to credit card services, in which merchants pay for the service, Bregman explained.

Asked to compare the clearinghouse idea to the Liberty Alliance (http://www.projectliberty.org/) identity management effort, Bregman said Liberty focuses on standards for communicating identities. But it does not define how to establish identities, he said.

Also at the conference, venture capital executives who have experience as CIOs offered mixed reviews on how much the SaaS model can penetrate the enterprise. They spoke on the topic after an audience member cited Google's ambitions to provide desktop applications over the Web and asked how far SaaS could go in the enterprise.

Donald Haile, venture partner and site general manager with Fidelity Ventures, said that three years ago, his firm would never have bought into SaaS. But that view has changed. "I'm in the process of changing my opinion," said Haile.