SAN DIEGO, June 23 /PRNewswire/ --

- Release of IAF and IGF Drives Standardized Identity Assurances and 
Policy-Based Data and Privacy Protection across Identity-Enabled Applications 
and Networks

Liberty Alliance, the global identity community working to build a more
trust-worthy internet for consumers, governments and businesses worldwide,
today announced an industry milestone in driving trust and privacy into
enterprise and identity-enabled applications based on the release of the
Liberty Identity Assurance Framework (IAF) and the Liberty Identity
Governance Framework (IGF). Today's news is the result of the collaborative
development of standardized frameworks and technologies designed to meet
cross-industry requirements for policy-based security and privacy systems,
with a focus on streamlining the establishment and management of identity and
trust across user-driven applications and networks.

The IAF has been developed within the Liberty Identity Assurance Expert
Group and public special interest group under the leadership of Frank
Villavicencio, director, Citigroup Global Transaction Services and Alex
Popowycz, vice president, Fidelity Investments. The IAF defines a global
standard framework and necessary support programs for validating trusted
identity assurance service providers in a way that scales, empowers business
processes and fosters the deployment of identity federation networks, by
standardizing four identity assurance levels and the related certification
process for credential service providers. The protocol independent IAF makes
it easier and more cost effective for organizations to link identity
federations together based on a uniform definition of the security and
privacy risks associated with each level of identity assurance. More
information about the IAF is available by viewing today's corresponding
Liberty Alliance Releases Identity Assurance Framework press release.

The IGF has been developed within the global Liberty Alliance Technology
Expert Group (TEG) and with open source implementation ongoing at
OpenLiberty.org. IGF is the industry's first declarative policy framework for
managing identity flows within organizations motivated by regulatory
requirements such as the European Data Protection Initiative,
Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act, PCI Security Standard and Sarbanes-Oxley. IGF helps
enterprises reduce risk associated with managing identity data by creating a
standard for defining enterprise-level policies and controls for consumer
consent for sharing sensitive personal information, including personally
identifiable information. Such policies ensure that identity-enabled
enterprise applications can be deployed and managed securely across
enterprise networks. More information about the IGF is available by viewing
today's corresponding Liberty Alliance Announces First Release of Identity
Governance Framework Components press release.

"With today's announcements, Liberty Alliance is delivering on its
promise to provide developers, system integrators and organizations in every
sector with standardized business and policy frameworks to help build and
deploy more trusted identity-enabled enterprise and user-driven
applications," said Roger Sullivan, president of the Liberty Alliance
Management Board and vice president, Oracle Identity Management. "The Liberty
Identity Assurance Framework and the Liberty Identity Governance Framework
help organizations enable a variety of new business services by making it
easier to address the business and policy pain points involved in managing
identity relationships and user privacy across multiple identity systems."

The release of the IAF and IGF provide organizations with a portfolio of
solutions for driving policy into identity systems in order to better manage
the many identity relationships spanning organizations and applications. The
protocol independent IAF lays the foundation for establishing standardized
identity assurances and the requirements an enterprise or group of
enterprises should meet in order to obtain IAF certification. The IGF allows
for the creation and updating of policy for protecting identity information
and provides enterprises with tools for policy enforcement, decision
explanation and auditing. The frameworks speed the advancement of
interoperable and secure policy-based identity solutions across vertical
markets and regions to better protect consumers against identity theft and
fraud and to help organizations meet a variety of global regulatory
requirements. The first versions of the IAF and IGF released today are
available at:

IAF -
http://www.projectliberty.org/content/download/4315/28869/file/liberty-identi
ty-assurance-framework-v1.1.pdf

(Due to the length of this URL, it may be necessary to copy and paste
this hyperlink into your Internet browser's URL address field. Remove the
space if one exists.)

IGF -
http://www.projectliberty.org/liberty/resource_center/specifications/igf_1_0_
specs

(Due to the length of this URL, it may be necessary to copy and paste
this hyperlink into your Internet browser's URL address field. Remove the
space if one exists.)

"Identity assurance makes user authentication meaningful. Without it,
there is too much risk that the authentication has been compromised," said
Mark Diodati, senior analyst, Identity and Privacy Strategies, Burton Group.
"Standards-based identity assurance definitions and attestation functions are
particularly important for scalable federation environments, because
organizations need a way to ensure that their partners' identity assurance
processes are commensurate with the security needs of the application."

About Liberty Alliance

Liberty Alliance is the only global identity community with a membership
base that includes technology vendors, consumer service providers and
educational and government organizations working together to build a more
trust-worthy internet by addressing the technology, policy and privacy
aspects of digital identity management. Liberty Alliance is also the only
identity organization with a history of testing vendor products for true
interoperability of identity specifications. Nearly 80 products and identity
solutions from vendors around the world have now passed Liberty
Interoperable(TM) testing. Liberty Alliance works with identity organizations
worldwide to ensure all voices are included in the global identity discussion
and regularly holds and participates in public events designed to advance the
harmonization and interoperability of CardSpace, Liberty SAML 2.0 Federation,
Liberty Web Services, OpenID and WS-* specifications. More information about
Liberty Alliance as well as information about how to join many of its public
groups and mail lists is available at www.projectliberty.org.

CONTACT:

    Russ DeVeau
    Liberty Alliance
    www.projectliberty.org
    +1-508-487-6102 - Office
    +1-908-251-1549 - Mobile
    russd @ projectliberty dot org (no spaces)
    IM: devcommruss



Web site: http://www.projectliberty.org