Liberty Alliance expands its influence

By Alun Williams

Posted on 16 Apr 2003 at 12:58

The Liberty Alliance - created back in September 2001 - is concerned with the management of online user identities. When online services grow ever more pervasive, the secure identification of individuals becomes ever more important, and this is the area the organisation tackles. It is an alternative approach to Microsoft's .Net Password.

At the RSA 2003 conference in San Francisco, companies such as Ericsson, HP, Nokia, Novell, SchlumbergerSema and Sun have been demonstrating Liberty Alliance-based technology. This relates to Liberty's Phase 1 specifications for opt-in account linking and simplified sign-on.

Sun has already implemented the technology Liberty Alliance bears fruit - within version 6.0 of its Sun ONE Identity Server.

The organisation has also announced a draft release of its Phase 2 specification. This covers security and privacy implementation guidelines, as well as a 'Privacy and Security Best Practices' document

The documents are available at www.projectliberty.org for public review and comment.

Thirdly, Liberty recently announced that it had contributed version 1.1 of its federated network identity specifications to OASIS (Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards). Specifically, the spec will appear within future versions of the OASIS Open Standard Security Assertion Markup Language (SAML). Part of Liberty's mission, it has declared, is to work closely with other standards bodies in advancing federated network identity.

Liberty Alliance is backed by Sun Microsystems and other charter members include Sony, Cisco Systems, eBay, VeriSign, Vodafone and NTT DoCoMo.

Essentially, it is an organisation to create a standards-based, single sign-on identity system for digital commerce. It is intended to be operable from any device connected to the Internet, whether it be from desktop PCs, cellular phones, special credit cards, cars or point-of-sale terminals.

Sun Microsystems and NeuStar have also just announced an alliance to provide federated identity services. The idea is fo companies to be able to exchange 'digital credentials' with other Liberty-compliant businesses via the Web. This will be based on NeuStar's NeuLiberty identity management services and the Sun ONE Identity Server.