LAS VEGAS, September 15 /PRNewswire/ --

- Applications in the global identity, eCommerce, eGovernment, social
networking and telecom sectors win Identity Deployment of the Year Awards

Kantara Initiative, a global identity community working to solve
harmonization and interoperability challenges among identity-enabled
enterprise, Web 2.0 and Cloud applications and services, today announced that
six applications have won a 2009 IDDY (Identity Deployment of the Year)
Award. The IDDY Deployment award winners include Google and Plaxo; Signicat;
and the U.S. Department of Defense. The winning IDDY Proof of Concept (POC)
awards include fun communications; Gemalto and Vodafone; and NRI, NTT and
Oracle. The IDDYs were presented today at CSO magazine's Digital ID World
2009 in Las Vegas, NV.

"Winners of the 2009 IDDY Award reflect the evolving identity landscape,
where applications are leveraging a wide range of protocols and collaboration
is key to moving the global identity industry forward," said Brett McDowell,
executive director, Kantara Initiative. "With more joint submissions than any
other year and nominations spanning industries and regions, we congratulate
the six winning applications from ten different organizations for
demonstrating some of the most innovative and diverse identity solutions in
the marketplace today."

Now in its fourth year, the IDDY program has grown within Kantara
Initiative to recognize the individuals and organizations developing
identity-enabled applications built using any open identity technology.
Judges evaluate nominations based on criteria that include the benefits
applications deliver to communities, businesses, governments and people; the
ROI the application demonstrates; and how the solution may successfully
address identity issues such as reducing identity theft, meeting regulatory
requirements, and providing users with increased security and privacy
protection.

Winners in the Deployment Category:

Google and Plaxo - Google and Plaxo have won an IDDY Deployment award for
their collaborative work in the development of a "hybrid onboarding" solution
designed to increase the success rate of users finishing the registration
process with a social network. The solution uses a combination of open
technologies referred to as the "OpenStack," which includes OAuth, OpenID,
Portable Contacts and XRDS. Because the implementation uses open
technologies, the solution can be easily replicated by others to optimize
onboarding between any OpenID Provider (OP) and Relying Party (RP) pairing.
With a success rate of 92 percent, the application enhances the user
experience while providing increased security and privacy protections. The
service was deployed by Google and Plaxo in early 2009 and is currently
available to hundreds of millions of Google users. A presentation reviewing
the application is available at http://tinyurl.com/ok8u9x

Signicat - Signicat has won an IDDY Deployment award for the development
of an online hosted Identity Provider that is offered as a managed service to
private and public sector enterprises and organizations in the Nordic Region
(Norway, Sweden, Denmark and Finland). The service acts as an intermediary to
provide organizations with easy and secure access to the region's eID
(electronic ID) infrastructure. The solution supports SAML for strong
authentication and SAML and OpenID for Web Single Sign On, as well as
eSignature for workflow and long-time archiving of signed documents. The
Identity Provider went live in October 2005, and is currently used by
approximately thirty organizations giving access to over 12 million
pre-authenticated identities. More information is available at
www.signicat.com.

U.S. Department of Defense - The U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) has won
an IDDY Deployment Award for SPOT (Synchronized Pre-Deployment and
Operational Tracker), a Web-based enterprise networking solution used by the
DoD for precise tracking and management of assets supporting US forces
deployed overseas. The contractor cross-credentialing with SPOT has been
developed and launched in collaboration between the U.S. Department of
Defense and the Federation for Identity and Cross-Credentialing Systems, Inc.
(FiXs). The system recognizes identity credentials issued by various
government entities as well as compatible, standards-based, certified
identity credentials issued by industry to support identity-based
transactions between the U.S. Government, various international coalition
governments, and supporting industry contractors and suppliers. SPOT provides
visibility into contingency contracts accounting for 10,439 companies and
3,783 active contracts, with the system currently supporting more than 12,650
end users. More information is available by visiting
http://www.bta.mil/products/spot.html and http://fixs.org/.

Winners in the Proof of Concept Category:

fun communications - fun communications has won an IDDY in the POC
category for the development of its WebCard Loyalty solution, a public portal
that can be used worldwide. WebCard Loyalty let's anyone create their own
customer loyalty system for the Internet using "virtual loyalty cards" and is
based on Information Card Technology. The application combines user-centric
identity management and customer loyalty programs such as bonus points,
coupon promotions and discounts on partner websites, into a single
application. Retailers and portal operators can issue their own virtual
loyalty cards that can serve as a reliable means of authentication and
authorization. The portal can be adapted to meet individual requirements, and
is suitable for issuing all types of virtual identification cards such as
student ID cards, library cards and discount cards. More information is
available by visiting http://www.fun.de and http://www.webcard-loyalty.com.

Gemalto and Vodafone - Gemalto and Vodafone Group R&D have won an IDDY in
the POC category for the development of a solution that adds strong
authentication capabilities to OpenID using a Universal Integrated Circuit
Card (UICC, typically a SIM card) inserted in a handset or inside a USB
token, and is using either public key infrastructure (PKI) or a one-time
password (OTP) as the underlying authentication technology. The application
allows the use of distinct devices to access the service and to authenticate.
The UICC (SIM) is used as a networked cryptographic computer exposing
authentication services accessible via IP protocols. This provides users with
new and convenient options for securely accessing OpenID-enabled sites from
devices such as a PC, handset or game station. Mobile network operators could
offer a service to allow end users to leverage UICC-based OpenID
single-sign-on to secure access to Web applications. More information is
available by visiting http://www.betavine.net.

NRI, NTT and Oracle - NRI, NTT and Oracle have won an IDDY in the POC
category for an application that demonstrates the possibility and
practicality of achieving policy interoperability between OpenID and SAML.
Both technologies include mechanisms designed to carry identity assurance
information; OpenID uses the Provider Authentication Policy Extension (PAPE),
while SAML uses its Authentication Context. While the two mechanisms are
logically similar, until this proof of concept, they had not been
demonstrated to be compatible. The application demonstrates how the number of
services where an existing OpenID or SAML credential might be used could be
effectively increased. A presentation reviewing the application is available
at http://tinyurl.com/q5egag

This year's winners join the growing list of IDDY Award recipients who
have been at the forefront of successfully addressing some of the most
challenging technology and policy issues in the global identity sector, with
each winner delivering unique benefits to organizations and users. Previous
winners of the IDDY include Aetna, Citi, Deutsche Telekom AG (a two-time
winner), eBIZ.mobility, EduTech, NTT Labs, UNINETT, the New Zealand
Government, Rearden Commerce and the UK Government Authentication Gateway.
Kantara Initiative will issue the call for nominations for the 2010 IDDY
Awards during 2Q 2010.

About the Kantara Initiative 2009 IDDY Award Judging Panel

The following individuals served on the 2009 Judging Panel: J. Trent
Adams, trust & identity outreach specialist, Internet Society and chair of
the Kantara Initiative Leadership Council; Mike Beach, CISSP, chief security
designer, information security, The Boeing Company; Bob Bragdon, Publisher,
CSO magazine; John Fontana, senior editor, Network World; Gerry Gebel, VP &
service director, identity and privacy strategies, Burton Group; Paul Madsen,
chair of the Kantara Initiative ID-WSF Evolution Work Group and identity
standards researcher, NTT; RL Bob Morgan, senior technology architect,
University of Washington; Nat Sakimura, senior researcher, Nomura Research
Institute (NRI); Toby Stevens, director, Enterprise Privacy Group; Roger
Sullivan, president of the Kantara Initiative Board of Trustees, president of
Liberty Alliance and vice president Oracle Identity Management; and Phil
Windley, founder and chief technology officer, Kynetx. Panelists recused
themselves from judging in categories where their organization had submitted
a nomination. More information about the IDDY Award's is available at
http://tinyurl.com/ldteb2