NEW YORK and MADRID, Spain, January 27 /PRNewswire/ --

- Public Group Fostering the Next Generation of Interoperable, Secure and
Privacy-Respecting Identity-Enabled Telecom Applications

Liberty Alliance, the global identity community working to build a more
trustworthy Internet for businesses, governments and people, today announced
the launch of the public Liberty Alliance Telecom Special Interest Group
(SIG). The group has been formed by representatives from Ericsson, NEC,
NeuStar, Orange, Symlabs and TeliaSonera and is the tenth Liberty Alliance
special interest group open to both Liberty Alliance members and non-members.
The goal of the SIG is to develop best practices for managing
identity-information and identity-enabled transactions and services in the
global telecom sector.

Liberty SAML 2.0 Federation and Liberty Identity Web Services are widely
validated and deployed in the telecom and service provider industries
(http://projectliberty.org/liberty/adoption/telecom).
Gartner states that "SAML 2.0 has become the de facto federation standard
across industries."(1) Burton Group recommends organizations consider Liberty
Alliance ID-WSF 2.0 specifications when implementing federation.(2) The SIG
is working to advance identity-enabled enterprise and Web 2.0 applications in
the telecom sector based on Liberty Alliance standards and the Liberty
Identity Governance
(http://projectliberty.org/liberty/strategic_initiatives/identity_governance)
and Identity Assurance Frameworks
(http://projectliberty.org/liberty/strategic_initiatives/identity_assurance).

According to Jose Luis Mariz, strategic product manager at Ericsson and
chair of the Liberty Alliance Telecom SIG, "The formation of the Telecom SIG
provides organizations and individuals in the telecom industry with an
important public forum for collaboratively fostering the next generation of
interoperable, secure and privacy-respecting identity-enabled applications
for businesses and people."

About the Public Telecom SIG

Members of the Liberty Alliance Telecom SIG are collaborating with other
groups and standards bodies to identify and eliminate the technology and
policy issues telecom operators face when it comes to the wide-scale
deployment of interoperable identity-enabled applications and services. The
new Telecom SIG joins a growing ecosystem of industry-specific SIGs
(http://projectliberty.org/liberty/public_community) formed by
market leaders active in Liberty Alliance, such as Healthcare and
eGovernment, who are working to ensure their specialized identity management
and services requirements are being met by emerging technology and policy
frameworks. Information about the Telecom SIG, including how to join public
calls and mail lists, is available at http://tinyurl.com/9ffnke

1) Source: Gartner, Inc. "The U.S. Government's Adoption of SAML 2.0
Shows Wide Acceptance", by Gregg Kreizman, John Pescatore and Ray Wagner,
October 29, 2007

2) Source: Burton Group "Federated Identity", by Bob Blakley, October
2008

CONTACT:

    Russ DeVeau
    E-mail russd@projectliberty.org
    Twitter http://twitter.com/LibertyRus