What: Kantara Initiative Summit
When: Tuesday, April 17, 2012, 8:00am-1:30pm, Room location TBD
Where: Dolce Ballhaus Forum, Andreas-Danzer-Weg, 85716 Unterschleißheim, Munich, Germany
(at the European Identity Conference 2012)

Description: 2012 brings new opportunities for identity services in the eGovernment and private markets.
Gain “state-of-identity” insights through a series of presentations of common scenarios from diverse market leaders.

We will focus on Trust Framework Model, deployment interoperability, and what your organization can do to get involved. We also look forward some open-time Q&A as well as learning more about the experiences the attendees would like to share.

The User Managed Access (UMA) Interop will show some UMA real-world implementations including: SMARTAM.org and Fraunhofer AISEC.

We are also looking forward to hearing feedback and questions from the audience as input to the discussions.

Registration: Register for the Kantara Summit via EIC Conference.  40 persons max. capacity.

Agenda:

Kantara Initiative today announced that identity management products from CA Technologies, IBM Corporation, SAP AG, and UNINETT passed the Kantara Initiative SAML 2.0 Full-Matrix Interoperability testing.

Piscataway, NJ – May 10, 2011 – Kantara Initiative sponsored the test event for the purpose of testing the interoperability of implementations in accordance with the SAML 2.0 specifications. The event was conducted by the Drummond Group Inc. (DGI) with oversight from the Kantara Interoperability Review Board (IRB). The Web-based full-matrix testing allows vendors to participate from anywhere in the world and features rigorous processes for ensuring products meet SAML 2.0 interoperability requirements for open, secure and privacy-respecting federated identity management. The testing itself was conducted from January 10 to March 1, 2011.

“SAML 2.0 has proven to be critical to how cross-domain security is enabled both between enterprises and between enterprises and cloud service providers,” said Matthew Gardiner, director at CA Technologies and president of Kantara Initiative. “Organizations can count on the Kantara Initiative testing process to certify products that have proven to meet rigorous interoperability requirements. This certification process should serve as a key business enabler as more and more sensitive applications cross Web domains.”

This is the first SAML full-matrix interoperability test event sponsored by the Kantara Initiative, continuing the program it inherited from the Liberty Alliance. Full-matrix testing is the best means to verify product group interoperability as it verifies that every product can successfully interact and interoperate with the other products in the test group using the test criteria. This test marked the second time the SAML 2.0 eGovernment (eGov) Profile, Version 1.5, was included in the event. The eGov profile was produced as a result of a multi-government effort to create a SAML conformance profile for government-centric identity management.

“CA Technologies is especially pleased to receive the Kantara Initiative’s SAML 2.0 certification for CA Federation Manager. CA Technologies supports the important role that the SAML standard has in providing enhanced security for organizations as they take advantage of the rapidly growing market for Cloud services and other identity-centric services on the Internet.” said Ellen Newlands, CA Technologies Product Manager and Kantara Interoperability Review Board Co-Chair.

“The SAML 2.0 interoperability certification is beneficial for vendors to test and validate standards based implementation of federation capabilities and help support customer’s heterogeneous IT environment and business needs,” said Ravi Srinivasan, Program Director, IBM Security Solutions.

“Support of identity federation and SAML 2.0 are critical to many SAP customers”, states Michael Friedrich, Vice President for Security and Identity Management at SAP AG, “and it is a crucial step to execute on SAP’s strategy to offer on demand applications and allow for secure access and Single Sign-On between on premise and on demand offerings in heterogeneous landscapes. With the SAML support in SAP NetWeaver Application Server ABAP 7.02 and with that also in the highest SAP Business Suite 7i2010 release as well as with the latest version of SAP NetWeaver Identity Management, SAP has done a major step in enhancing its products to allow customers to implement standards-based, interoperable and cross domain Single Sign-On and reduce administrative effort and TCO.”

“For UNINETT, complying with open standards is very important, and we’ve been working for open standards on the Internet ever since we were founded,” says CEO Petter Kongshaug, UNINETT. “UNINETT operates the national identity infrastructure for education and research, and for our customers it’s reassuring to know that our common infrastructure is based upon state of the art software. The Kantara testing programme has been very useful to us.”

View the Test Results

View the Final Report

List of Participants:
CA Technologies
· Implementation: CA Federation Manager – http://www.ca.com/products/detail/CA-Federation-Manager.aspx
· Specific model/version: 12.5
· Profiles: IdP Lite, SP Lite, eGov 1.5

IBM Corporation
· Implementation: IBM Tivoli Federated Identity Manager – http://www-01.ibm.com/software/tivoli/products/federated-identity-mgr/
· Specific model/version: Version 6 Release 2
· Profiles: IDP, IDP Lite, SP, SP Lite, eGov 1.5, POST Binding

SAP AG
· Implementation: NetWeaver Application Server – http://www.sdn.sap.com/irj/sdn/nw-identitymanagement
· Specific model/version: ABAP 7.02
· Profiles: SP Lite, eGov 1.5

SAP AG
· Implementation: NetWeaver Identity Management – http://www.sdn.sap.com/irj/sdn/nw-identitymanagement
· Specific model/version: 7.2
· Profiles: IDP, IDP Lite, SP, SP Lite, eGov 1.5, POST Binding

UNINETT
· Implementation: SimpleSAMLphp – http://simplesamlphp.org/
· Specific model/version: Version 1.8
· Profiles: IDP Lite, SP Lite

About Kantara Initiative
http://kantarainitiative.org/

About Drummond Group Inc. (DGI)
http://www.drummondgroup.com/

###

Media Contact
Dervla O’Reilly
+1-415-731-4487
dervla[at]kantarainitiative[dot]org

We are happy to announce that the Federation Operator Guidelines (FOG) Version 1.0 has passed the All-Member Ballot and is now an official Kantara Initiative Recommendation.

The document provides guidelines for an identity federation operator, an entity that defines and oversees a collective of cooperating credential service providers and relying parties. If you want to get a better understanding of the FOG Recommendation, the document can be found on the Kantara Initiative site.

Congratulations to the Identity Assurance Work Group (IAWG) and it’s members for their diligent work in completing this Recommendation.  Thanks to all who voted — this is a major milestone for Kantara Initiative with more to come in 2011.

Kantara Initiative is proud to announce eValid8 as their first Accredited Assessor for the Identity Assurance Accreditation and Certification Program.

The Identity Assurance Accreditation and Certification Program is committed to helping drive organizational interoperability in order to assure trust in the identity-based experience of end users, Relying Parties and Federation Operators. Kantara-Accredited Assessors perform Assessments of Credential Service Providers based on the Kantara Initiative Identity Assurance Framework and provide a Kantara Assessment Report (KAR) to the Kantara Initiative Assurance Review Board (ARB). The ARB then makes its recommendations to the Board of Trustees concerning the granting of Kantara-approved service status based on the KAR.

The Certification Program assesses applicants against strict criteria according to the Level of Assurance desired to be attained, and grants to candidates of the program the right to use the Kantara Initiative Mark, a symbol of trustworthy identity and credential management services at specified Assurance Levels. The results of this certification program are maintained electronically on the Kantara Initiative website in the Kantara Initiative Trust Status List, which lists both approved services and accredited assessors.

Kantara Initiative is pleased to begin work with eValid8.  The Kantara Initiative Identity Assurance Accreditation and Certification program is now accepting Credential Service Provider applications for Certification. Please address queries regarding the Identity Assurance Accreditation and Certification Program to staff[at]kantarainitiative[dot]org or via our Contact Us form.

eValid8 are a certified IT auditing firm and recognized as a leader in the field of identity management, IT auditing, privacy impact assessment, and regulatory compliance.

We are pleased to announce that registration is now open for the SAML 2.0 Full Matrix Test Event. The deadline for registration for this event is September 13, 2010.

Expanding on the highly successful Liberty Interoperable™ Program, the Kantara Initiative Interoperability Test Program is designed to certify interoperability of products and technologies across multiple identity-related protocols and standards, including SAML 2.0, InfoCard, OpenID, ID-WSF and elements of the WS-* stack (WS-Security, WS-Trust, WS-Federation).

The first Test Event scheduled to occur is the SAML 2.0 Full Matrix Test event. This event will reference the soon to come Kantara Initiative SAML 2.0 Test Plan, the eGovernment SAML Implementation Profile v2.0 and the eGovernment SAML Implementation Profile v1.5.

The test event will take place on-line starting September 20th and running through November 5th, 2010. The fee for this event is $16,000 USD. The Test Event will be operated by our partners the Drummond Group Incorporated.

Register for the event at our SAML 2.0 Test Event Registration page.

Details on the event and reference documents visit the SAML 2.0 Full Matrix Event Details page.

For answers to questions regarding the SAML 2.0 Full Matrix Test Event send us an inquiry via our Contact Us form.

By taking part in this event participants will be further assuring market trust in the interoperability of their implementations through the Kantara Initiative Interoperability Certification Program. We look forward to your inquiries and participation.

The Kantara Initiative is pleased to announce the formation of the Kantara Initiative Federation Interoperability Work Group (FIWG). The purpose of this Work Group is to profile existing specifications to define an interoperable trust infrastructure for use by parties participating in Trust Frameworks. This will allow entities to determine the certification status and configuration parameters of entities outside of their local federation.

- Join this Group
- Review their Charter
- IPR Policy – Creative Commons Share-Alike Attribution
- Mail list and archives

This Work Group is open to the public and ANY interested party may sign up to Participate. If you or your colleagues would like to join this group, simply complete the Group Participation Agreement.

John Bradley will convene the group and welcomes you to join our kick off conference call on Wednesday, June 2, 7am PDT where we will discuss goals, scope and leadership nominations. The group will meet on a weekly basis towards the IOP at Burton Catalyst in San Diego end of July, reverting to bi-weekly thereafter.

For more information on the Interoperability Workgroup, please visit the Federation Interoperability home page here: http://kantarainitiative.org/confluence/display/fiwg/Home