In The News

Secret identity: Solving the privacy puzzle in a federated model

– Governments face a dilemma. As more and more services move online, identifying and authenticating citizens in cyber-space are becoming more difficult. Citizens want one-stop service but they also want assurances their personal information is kept private. Sharing information across jurisdictions can create seamless service delivery, but government entities must ensure they are dealing with the same person.

Liberty Alliance releases federated identity framework

– The Liberty Alliance identity technology consortium has issued a draft framework that organizations could use to share identity information for electronic transactions. The Alliance’s Identity Assurance Expert Group developed the Liberty Identity Assurance Framework. The alliance is seeking feedback on the draft.

GSA Signs on with SAML

– The government’s push toward E-Authentication and federated identity management has given a boost to the Security Assertion Markup Language, industry analysts say. In a recent research report, Gartner concluded that the federal commitment to SAML bolsters mainstream adoption of the language. “The U.S. government’s adoption puts considerable weight behind the standard and its continued adoption and maturation,” the report states.

Liberty Alliance Intros IAF

– Liberty Alliance today announced the public release of the Liberty Identity Assurance Framework (IAF). The IAF has been developed by Liberty’s Identity Assurance Expert Group (IAEG) to simplify and speed the deployment of identity federations by standardizing identity assurance levels and the certification process for all identity assurance service providers participating in federated relationships. Liberty Alliance will hold a public webcast to review the Identity Assurance Framework on Thursday, November 29 at 8:00AM US PT.

Liberty Alliance Touts Identity Assurance Framework

– The IAF is designed to simplify and speed the deployment of identity federations by standardising identity assurance levels and the certification process for all identity assurance service providers participating in federated relationships. Developed by members of the Liberty Alliance Identity Assurance Expert Group representing the financial services, government, healthcare, IT and telecoms sectors, the IAF is designed to meet cross-industry requirements for baseline identity assurance policy standards for all public and private sector federations.

GSA taps Liberty Alliance for E-Authentication interops testing

– 1.MEDIA – Government Computer News – 10/30
The General Services Administration has chosen the Liberty Alliance consortium to do SAML 2.0 interoperability testing for products in its E-Authentication Solution program.

Securing Very Important Data: Your Own

– Another project, the Identity Governance Framework, aims to help organizations comply with national and international regulations, including the Sarbanes-Oxley Act and the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act. It establishes a new approach for securely sharing and auditing sensitive personal information, and has been widely embraced by major enterprise software vendors as well as providers of identity technology.

NZ Government joint identity award winner

– The State Services Commission's authentication programme has collected a global Identity Deployment of the Year award. The awards, one of four from global identity consortium Liberty Alliance, were announced at Digital ID World 2007.

Do Not Ask Your Customers for Their Social Security Numbers

– Rather than a Social Security number, vendors need to develop a universal identification system, such as the Liberty Alliance’s federated movement, one that all companies can access.

EAP and Liberty Alliance form new global expert group to drive trusted federations and identity assurance internationally

– Liberty Alliance, the global identity consortium working to build a more trusted Internet for consumers, governments and businesses worldwide, today announced it has formed a new expert group to deliver the Liberty Trust Framework, an organizational framework designed to fill industry requirements for standardized identity assurance criteria for use in a broad range of federation scenarios. Liberty’s Identity Assurance Expert Group (IAEG) was established by the recent merge of the Electronic Authentication Partnership (EAP) into Liberty Alliance, and consists of representatives from the worldwide financial services, government, healthcare and service provider sectors working collaboratively to release the Liberty Trust Framework for public review and input later this year.

Liberty Alliance Forms New Expert Group to Deliver the Liberty Trust Framework

– “With the technologies for wide-scale federation in place, the Liberty Trust Framework provides the necessary business structure that will allow organizations of all sizes and in every market sector to better manage and protect identity information across all identity federations,” said Roger Sullivan, president of the Liberty Alliance Management Board and vice president of Oracle Identity Management, as Liberty Trust Alliance today announced it has formed a new expert group to deliver the Liberty Trust Framework.

Getting social networking sites to socialize

– Social networking sites such as Facebook and MySpace have become part of the daily routine for millions of Internet users who connect with friends, share photos and reach out to other people with similar interests. The popularity of social networks has resulted in an unfortunate by-product, however – the mushrooming number of requests that come from dozens of these sites.

Identity Governance Framework sprints to the finish line

– Setting a pace that the IETF and other slow-moving standards bodies could envy, the Liberty Alliance announced last week the completion of market requirements document (MRD) for the Identity Governance Framework (IGF). It also announced that development of technical specifications to meet use case requirements is now occurring both within Liberty's Technology Expert Group (TEG) and at openLiberty.org <http://www.openliberty.org/> (home of open source tools to further the use of Liberty protocols).

Online ID Management Project Progresses

– The Liberty Alliance Project has started developing technical specifications for how companies can protect sensitive personal data within their IT systems and securely share that data with other organizations.

Liberty Alliance opens its doors to public

– New membership structure will make it possible for individuals to join and for anyone to access mailing lists and special interest groups. With this inclusive approach, Liberty Alliance is removing barriers, which is likely to result in dramatic expansion.