In The News

Web Services: Where Identity Management Goes From Here

– As organizations increase their use of Web Services, they often hit a barrier: how to keep such transactions secure. As the size of Web Services deployments between businesses, partners, and customers increases, so do potential identity-management problems. What’s needed, then, are full-featured, secure frameworks for federating identity that everyone can agree on.

Group fights for federated ID solution

– The Liberty Alliance Project, a global consortium working to develop an open standard for federated network identity, envisions participating in pilot projects with IT architects as one of the next steps in helping achieve the alliance's goal of secure interoperability on the Web.

Identity theft threatens federation

– Identity theft is fast becoming the new bête noire of the cyberworld, crowding out spyware, spam and viruses for that dubious honor. During the past several months, the media have splashed increasingly frightening cover stories, consumer alerts and other breaking news about people who've had their identities spoofed, credit cards hijacked and assets looted by unseen strangers lurking on the Internet.

A new way to authenticate your identity?

– For several years, technologists with the Liberty Alliance, an industry consortium, have been developing a way for people to log in to one network and be automatically authenticated at another. The idea is to avoid sharing a single password among multiple parties with which you transact business — the model followed when your bank and insurance carrier both ask for your Social Security number. Instead, one site sends another an encrypted numeric token that represents the user's identity — but only for that single Web session or transaction. The token is useless to anyone else or at another time. The Alliance's braintrust is now exploring ways its system can be applied more broadly in online systems where most identity thefts happen.

Identity Management Comes of Age

– Identity management is an idea whose time has come, as evidenced by the variety of tools, initiatives and services. We discuss a few in this article, but there are many more that affect not only employees and partners, but consumers as well.

Federated Single Sign-On Shifts GM into High Gear

– When General Motors Corp.'s employee portal forced workers to endure a traffic jam of user names and passwords, the company turned to federated single sign-on to put employees in the driver's seat.

The 50 most powerful people in networking

– The Liberty Alliance continues to shine as an excellent example of users taking standards issues into their own hands - and progressing at lightning speed. Under the leadership of Michael Barrett, [Liberty Alliance] spearheaded development of an identity management standard that it expects to be at the heart of more than 400 million electronic identities and clients by the end of 2005.

Identity is More Than Specs at Liberty Alliance

– Good standards are not born, they are made. When it comes to creating standards for federated identity management, the Liberty Alliance is one of the organizations at the forefront.

IBM Gets Behind Federated-Identity Standard

– IBM on Thursday said it has joined the Liberty Alliance, indicating that industry support is shifting toward the identity-management group's standard for using a single ID and password to access Web services across organizations.

IBM jumps into Liberty Alliance

– IBM has joined the Internet security consortium Liberty Alliance at the request of a customer, European mobile telecommunications provider Orange.

IBM Joins Liberty Alliance

– IBM Wednesday announced that it has joined the Liberty Alliance, the identity management group working to define standards around federated identity and Web services.

Liberty Alliance Captures Seven New Members

– Liberty Alliance, a far-reaching body working on identity standards for web services, has signed up seven new members.

Liberty Alliance names first director, new members

– The Liberty Alliance Project signalled that it expects to have longevity when it comes to developing and promoting federated identity standards by naming its first executive director on Monday.

Managing User Identities

– Officials at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory are working toward a centralized approach to managing the identity information for people who access the lab's network and computer systems. Officials in the lab's Computer Security Program will be responsible for managing authentication, which focuses on who has access to systems, rather than having that function duplicated across the lab's 12 directorates.

Location and Presence Take Identity Management to Next Level

– Identity management is a key initiative for 2004 and 2005, according to IT executives participating in Nemertes Research’s upcoming “Securing the Enterprise” research benchmark. Digital “identity” refers to the traits, attributes and preferences upon which one may receive personalized services. Identity traits could include government-issued IDs, corporate user accounts and biometric information. Two user “attributes” which may be associated with identity are presence and location.