Liberty was formed in 2001 by approximately 30 organizations to establish open standards, guidelines and best practices for identity management. Today it continues to focus on these objectives, with a global membership of more than 150 organizations, including technology vendors, consumer-facing companies, educational organizations and governments from around the world, as well as hundreds of additional organizations that participation in Liberty’s various open community Special Interest Groups (SIGs).
Deployed by organizations around the world, Liberty Federation allows consumers and users of Internet-based services and e-commerce applications to authenticate and sign-on to a network or domain once from any device and then visit or take part in services from multiple Web sites. This federated approach does not require the user to re-authenticate and can support privacy controls established by the user. The market requirements documents and case studies of deploying organizations, as well as presentations of deployments are available. The Liberty Alliance contributed its federation specification, ID-FF, to OASIS, forming the foundation for SAML 2.0, the converged federation specification that Liberty now recognizes.
The Liberty Alliance released Liberty Web Services in 2003. Developed based on well defined business requirements and with controls for consumer and user privacy always at the forefront, Liberty Web Services is an open framework for deploying and managing a variety of identity-based Web services. Liberty Web Services applications include Geo-location, Contact Book, Calendar, Mobile Messaging and Liberty People Service, the industry’s first open Web services framework for managing social applications such as bookmarks, blogs, calendars, photo sharing and instant messaging in a secure and privacy-respecting federated social network. The Liberty Alliance works very openly with other standards organizations, adopting published standards and contributing relevant work as appropriate.
With the deployment of Liberty Federation and Liberty Web Services continuously increasing, the Liberty Alliance has tracked well over one billion Liberty-enabled identities and devices at the end of 2006. A snapshot of organizations deploying Liberty Federation and Liberty Identity Web Services is available in the Adoption section. Additionally, the Liberty Alliance is helping to drive open source development with openLiberty.org, as well as encouraging additional open source activities. The Alliance also helped launch what is now an independent effort, the Concordia Project, that will help drive harmonization of specifications in the identity space.
The Liberty Alliance is committed to helping to grow the identity marketplace, and help deployers to be successful and cost-effective in their deployments. As such, it introduced the Liberty Interoperable (TM) certification program in 2003, designed to test commercial and open source products against published standards to assure base levels of interoperability between products. This program has been recognized globally by end deployers for the assurance that it gives them that products work as advertised, saving time, money, and critical resources as deployers roll out solutions. Currently, more than 80 products have passed testing. Another key aspect to marketplace growth is common understandings of levels of trust, an activity that the Identity Assurance Expert Group as well as its public SIG counterpart, are focused on through the Identity Assurance Framework.
The Liberty Alliance has also focused heavily on the business and policy aspects of identity management, publishing business and policy guidelines in a variety of forms for different business and legal audiences in a variety of vertical sectors. The Liberty Alliance encourages and helps promote public dialogue that helps organizations to better understand how to set up Circles of Trust for federated deployments and other business considerations so that organizations can succeed in their deployments.
Liberty’s History
January 2009
Liberty Alliance Upgrades All Membership Levels to Sponsor
November 2008
OpenLiberty.org Releases First Open Source Identity Governance Framework Software
September 2008
CA, NTT Software, Ping Identity, RSA and Ubisecure Pass Latest SAML 2.0 Interoperability Testing
July 2008
Aetna, Citi, Deutsche Telekom AG and UNINETT Win 2008 Liberty Alliance IDDY Awards
June 2008
Liberty Alliance Releases Identity Assurance Framework (IAF) v1.1
June 2008
Liberty Alliance Releases First Draft of Identity Governance Framework (IGF)
March 2008
OpenLiberty.org Releases Open Source Code for Driving Security and Privacy Into Web Services and Web 2.0 Applications
December 2007
Liberty Alliance Announces First Companies to Pass Full-Matrix SAML 2.0 Interoperability Testing: HP, IBM, RSA, Sun, and Symlabs
November 2007
Liberty Alliance Releases Public Draft of Identity Assurance Framework
October 2007
US GSA Requires Liberty Alliance Interoperability Testing
September 2007
Liberty Alliance Announces Winners of the 2007 IDDY Award: eBIZ.mobility, New Zealand Government, NTT Labs and Rearden Commerce Honored
July 2007
Identity Governance Framework MRD released publicly
June 2007
HP, Intel, NTT and Symlabs First to Demonstrate Interoperability of the Liberty Advanced Client Specifications
May 2007
Liberty Alliance Announces New Membership Structure, Opening SIGs to Public Participation, Opening Mailing Lists and Offering New Membership Benefits, Including Individual Memberships
March 2007
Liberty Alliance Releases New Specifications for Linking Digital Identity Management to Consumer Devices
March 2007
Liberty Alliance Assists Corporate Legal Teams; Consortium Releases Framework for Establishing Contractual Agreements for Digital Identity Management
February 2007
Liberty Market Requirements Development Team Begins Work on Identity Governance Framework
January 2007
Liberty Alliance Announces openLiberty.org Project, Focus on Open Source Development
October 2006
Liberty Alliance Selects Drummond Group to Expand Interoperability Testing Program, introducing full matrix and global Internet-based testing capabilities
September 2006
Liberty Alliance Releases Final Version of ID-WSF 2.0 Web Services Standards
August 2006
Liberty announces first ever IDDY Award (IDentity Deployment of the Year) winners: EduTech, T-Online and the UK Government
July 2006
Liberty launches Standards Coordination Special Interest Group
May 2006
Liberty launches eGovernment and Open Source Special Interest Groups
February 2006
One Billion Liberty enabled identities and devices expected by end of 2006
January 2006
Liberty expands its membership base by fifteen with the addition of CallingID, ChoicePoint, Diamelle Technologies, Inc., Falkin Systems LLC, Fraunhofer Institute for Secure Information Technology (SIT), LogicaCMG, Livo Technologies, MedCommons Inc., National Board of Taxes Finland, OmniBranch, Inc., Phase2 Technology, Purdue University, SSC New Zealand Govt.,Telecom Italia SpA and TERENA
December 2005
Liberty members from AOL, Intel, Oracle and Sun Microsystems are elected to officer positions
November 2005
Liberty Alliance releases ID-WSF 2.0 R2, introducing People Service, a new social network layer for allowing consumers and enterprise users to manage a variety of social applications in a federated social network
November 2005
Conformance Testing program passes milestone as more than 70 products complete certification
October 2005
Liberty Alliance announces formation of Strong Authentication Expert Group with responsibilities for defining a standard industry framework that enables interoperability of multiple authentication mechanisms in Federated and/or Web services and/or stand-alone digital identity architectures/environments
October 2005
Liberty Alliance announces formation of Payments Special Interest Group
September 2005
Business and Policy Guidelines for deploying federated identity management released, addresses business, legal and privacy aspects of federation
April 2005
Liberty Alliance begins SAML 2.0 testing as part of conformance testing program
April 2005
Liberty Alliance releases “Circles of Trust: The Implications of EU Data Protection and Privacy Law for Establishing a Legal Framework for Identity Federation”. The whitepaper is a must-read for any organization planning to establish or participate in a Circle of Trust in the EU and beyond
March 2005
Three Special Interest Groups (SIGs) form: ID-Theft Prevention, Japan and eHealthcare. Special Interest Groups discuss topics of mutual interest, reflecting their collective thoughts and input to Liberty Expert Groups. Participation in SIGs is open to members of all levels (Board, Sponsor, Associate and Affiliate)
December 2004
Liberty Alliance submits RFI to US Department of Health and Human Sciences in response to Request for Information on “Development and Adoption of a National Health Information Network”. Liberty also participates in a joint filing authored by 13 organizations, including the Markle Foundation, HIMSS, the AMIA, ANSI and a number of other organizations
October 2004
Liberty Alliance announces products and services from 12 companies have earned the Liberty Alliance Interoperable mark– the first event to test against the Liberty Identity Web Services specification ID-WSF 1.0, including Alcatel, Elios, IBM, NEC, Nokia, Novell, NTT, Oracle, Ping Identity, Sun Microsystems, Symlabs and Trustgenix
September 2004
More new sponsor members, including Adobe, IBM, OpenNetwork and Senforce
July 2004
Liberty Alliance hosts interoperability event showcasing Liberty-enabled products and scenarios working together; companies include: AOL, Fidelity Investments, HP, Nokia, Novell, NTT, Sun, Trustgenix, and Vodafone
July 2004
Liberty Alliance expands its membership base with ten new sponsor members. New members include: Business Industry Political Action Committee, Gamefederation, Intel, Kayak Interactive, Mobile Telephone Networks, Oracle and Sharp Labs of America. Members upgrading their status to the sponsor level include: Computer Associates, Giesecke & Devrient and Trustgenix
June 2004
Liberty Alliance releases its business guidelines for federated identity deployments that focus on the 401(k) application space, including 401(k) servicing, provisioning and support
April 2004
Liberty Alliance releases an overview of its Identity Web Services Framework (ID-WSF) acting as a blueprint for secure web services architecture to facilitate connectivity across corporate boundaries and drive business opportunities between trusted companies
January 2004
Liberty Alliance releases Tier 2 business guidelines for mobile federated identity deployments; releases paper on how to reduce identity theft using federated identity
November 2003
Liberty Alliance announces 9 products and services that have successfully passed the first Liberty-sponsored conformance test
October 2003
Liberty Alliance finalizes Phase 2 specifications and privacy guidelines for federated identity
September 2003
Liberty Alliance unveils Conformance Program to validate products and services that have successfully implemented Liberty’s standards; Radicchio contributes existing mobile data services work to Liberty Alliance for further development
June 2003
Liberty Alliance releases Tier 1 business guidelines for wide scale identity federation; contributes v1.1 specifications to OASIS for inclusion in SAML 2.0
December 2002
Liberty Alliance v1.1 specifications publicly released
June 2002
Liberty Alliance v1.0 specifications publicly released; member companies announce upcoming availability of Liberty-enabled products
April 2002
Associate and Affiliate level membership opened for non-profits, government and commercial organizations
