SAN DIEGO, June 23 /PRNewswire/ --

- Framework Drives Trust Across Identity-Enabled Applications Based on 
Standardized and Certified Identity Assurance Levels

Liberty Alliance, the global identity community working to build a more
trust-worthy internet for consumers, governments and businesses worldwide,
today announced the first public release of the protocol independent Liberty
Identity Assurance Framework (IAF). The IAF details four identity assurance
levels to ease and speed the process of linking trusted identity-enabled
enterprise, social networking and Web 2.0 applications together based on
standardized business rules and security risks associated with each level of
identity assurance. Liberty Alliance will launch an IAF identity assurance
accreditation and certification program during 3Q 08.

The IAF has been developed within the Liberty Alliance Identity Assurance
Expert Group and corresponding public special interest group with input from
members of the global financial services, government, healthcare, IT and
telecommunications sectors. The policy-based framework removes the need for
organizations to "reinvent the wheel" each time they need to make trust
decisions about the acceptance of identity credentials, which could span from
SAML to X.509, when building and expanding identity systems. Organizations
adopting the IAF immediately understand how to address the business and
policy challenges involved in adding new members and services to federations
based on standardized IAF criteria, helping to reduce the complexities and
costs of advancing secure and privacy-respecting inter-federations across
sectors and regions.

"The Liberty Identity Assurance Framework provides federation operators
and organizations in every sector with an industry standard for moving
multi-protocol federations ahead based on trusted identity assurance levels,"
said Frank Villavicencio, co-chair of the Liberty Identity Assurance Expert
Group and director, Citigroup Global Transaction Services. "The IAF delivers
the business and policy foundation developers, businesses and system
integrators can now begin to leverage to more easily build and deploy a wide
variety of new federated services and enterprise-grade Web 2.0 applications."

The four identity assurance levels outlined in the Liberty Identity
Assurance Framework are based on a comprehensive set of process and policy
criteria organizations must meet to participate in IAF-based federations. The
IAF details authentication requirements to allow federation operators and
federating organizations to address cross-industry business, policy and
privacy requirements related to applications and services built using any
federation protocol and falling into each identity assurance level. The first
version of the Liberty Alliance Identity Assurance Framework released today
is available at

http://www.projectliberty.org/content/download/4315/28869/file/liberty-id
entity-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.)

According to Dr. Peter Alterman, Asst. CIO for E-Authentication at the US
National Institutes of Health and Chair, US Federal PKI Policy Authority,
"The Liberty Identity Assurance Framework will help us achieve global trust
at common, known levels of assurance. This will enable secure, trusted
electronic business transactions outside of the enterprise. We've recognized
this need for years within the US Government and introduced some of the first
successful interfederated business processes in early 2001, and we know that
to maximize the value we deliver to all of our citizens and businesses within
the US, we must grow these federations to achieve economies of scale, and
provide new end user offerings with validated privacy and security. The
Identity Assurance Framework enables the growth of these services worldwide."

Next Step - Liberty Certified Identity Assurance Levels

With four identity assurance levels in place, the IAF goes on to define
standard assessment criteria, accreditation and certification rules for
organizations to become certified at each identity assurance level.
Federation operators and their respective relying party members will leverage
IAF assessments performed by Liberty Alliance accredited assessors to
determine the credential-based identity services they are willing to trust.
Certification of identity assurance levels will provide federation operators
with assurances that organizations have met the underlying due diligence
applied to the issuance and use of identity credentials being asserted in any
given federated transaction. The Liberty Alliance public IAF certification
program is being developed within the Liberty Alliance Identity Assurance
Expert Group for public launch later this year. More information about the
IAF and the certification program is available at
http://projectliberty.org/liberty/strategic_initiatives/identity_assurance

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