Identity Assurance

The Identity Assurance Expert Group (IAEG), co-chaired by Alex Popowycz of Fidelity Investments and Frank Villavicencio of Global Transaction Services at Citi, is driving the work within Liberty Alliance of fostering the adoption of identity assurance services. To advance this goal, the IAEG provides a forum for identifying and resolving the market acceptance and commercial obstacles to broad deployment and adoption of identity assurance services. The first step has been development of a global standard Framework (see below), which also defines support programs needed for validating trusted identity assurance service providers in a way that scales, empowers business processes and benefits individual users of identity assurance services. The Framework will be the basis upon which identity assurance providers and their services can be certified as compliant to common policies, business rules and baseline commercial terms; avoiding redundant compliance efforts and market confusion about the substance of identity assurance value delivered.

The work of IAEG began by consolidating the Trust Framework of the EAP (Electronic Authentication Partnership), the Credential Assessment Framework of the US E-Authentication Federation, and other industry contributions. The consolidation deliverable consists of a harmonized, best-of-breed industry identity assurance standard. The standard consists of an identity credential policy, business procedure and rules and minimal baseline commercial terms (e.g. liability allocation) Framework supporting mutual acceptance, validation and lifecycle maintenance across identity federations and to foster inter-federation on a global scale. The scope of the IAEG is not just to consolidate and refine a standard Framework for identity assurance, but to move beyond pure policy development and into development of actionable and measurable programs (starting with certification) including certification education, industry marketing and broad market promotion. The scope includes support for individual, organizational and machine entity identity assurance.

The IAEG’s goal is to provide public and private sector organizations with a uniform means of relying on digital credentials issued by a variety of identity assurance providers (aka credential service providers) in order to advance trusted identity federation and thereby facilitate public access to online services and information. Interoperability of e-authentication systems, mutual acceptance of rules, policies and supporting business processes is essential to the cost-effective operation of safe and secure systems that perform essential electronic transactions and tasks across industry lines. Noting that identity assurance includes bi-directional assurance/authentication, the work of IAEG will provide a means for both end parties to an exchange to receive validation of each other's identity.

To accomplish this, this group will achieve and advance several key deliverables, including:

• The Identity Assurance Framework (IAF) – a set of concepts including business rules, procedural and technical trust criteria for identity providers, and assessment methodologies for determining conformance to trust criteria. The IAF is based on the EAP Trust Framework, the US EAF Credential Assessment Framework, and other input from both public and private industry stakeholders with relevant experience and contributions to this effort.
• A uniform set of standards based on the IAF that can be relied upon by either or both communities of interest in auditing or evaluating participants
• A set of strategic recommendations regarding the development and operation of an assessment certification program to advance the adoption of the IAF that would serve to foster inter-federation deployments on a global scale.

The IAEG does not seek to duplicate the e-authentication work of other organizations nor does it seek to develop authentication protocols. The IAEG output will be relevant to operational practices and will not be normative to any specific software implementation of authentication or federation protocols.

Community involvement and feedback on the framework is encouraged! An open SIG for Identity Assurance conversation is available in our SIG section.

To submit feedback on the Framework please use our public feedback form.

Resources of interest:

• Liberty Identity Assurance Framework v1.0
• LAP overview at Digital Identity Systems Workshop 2007