May 2, 2012 Mountain View, California – At this week’s Internet Identity Workshop, Kantara Initiative’s Information Sharing Work Group (http://InformationSharingWorkGroup.org) released a proposed Standard Information Sharing Label designed to help people understand how the information we share online gets used.

The label replaces confusing legalese typically buried in multi-page Terms of Service agreements with clear, simple language about who is requesting what information, for what purpose. The label can be used by any website with minimal effort and at no cost. The team has launched a Kickstarter project to fund the graphic design of the new label and seeks feedback and input in its weekly conference calls.

Website Terms of Service (TOS) agreements often go unread as website visitors ignore links and “click-through” without actually reading the fine print. As a result, most people have no idea what they are agreeing to. Typically these agreements are isolated from the primary user experience and filled with complex language and details that most people don’t understand. However, with the rise of privacy risks from sharing personal information online, people are increasingly concerned about how their information is used.

The Standard Information Sharing Label works in conjunction with existing practices to give individuals a clear, unambiguous picture of what is happening with the information they are about to share. Using a consistent design across all websites makes it easier for individuals to understand before they share, just like the USDA Nutrition Facts label helps consumers understand their nutritional options before they buy packaged foods.

The Working Draft of the proposed specification can be found at http://kantarainitiative.org/confluence/display/infosharing/Standard+Information+Sharing+Label

The group has produced a short video and launched a Kickstarter project to promote and finance the graphic design of the Standard Label. The video and information for backing the project can be found at http://standardlabel.org

The Information Sharing Work Group formed in April of 2009 to create a way to use contract law to make it easier and safer for people to share information online. Focusing on the narrow use case of information individuals voluntarily give to websites, the group’s approach avoids both the challenge of “solving” online privacy and the herculean task of standardizing general Terms of Service agreements. Bootstrapping a contractual Data Transaction agreement at the point of sharing is simpler and easier to understand, allowing both individuals and organizations to agree on the essential details for any online exchange. The Standard Information Sharing Label is the visible portion of that new framework and the first component to be released for public comment. The Work Group is co-Chaired by Iain Henderson and Joe Andrieu.

Kantara Initiative (http://kantarainitiative.org) is an industry and community organization which enables trust in identity services through our compliance programs, requirements development, and information sharing among communities including: industry, research & education, government agencies and international stakeholders.

Contact:
Joe Andrieu
+1(805)705-8651
joe@switchbook.com

April 18, 2012, Piscataway, NJ – Kantara Initiative is proud to announce that Electrosoft is the latest Kantara-Accredited Assessor able to perform Kantara Service Assessments at Assurance Levels 1, 2, 3 and 4. The Identity Assurance Framework (IAF) provides a means to enable relying parties to understand the trustworthiness of electronic identity credentials issued at commonly agreed levels of assurance. The IAF specifies the verification and proofing checks that Credential Service Providers (CSPs) carry out on entities, the way that CSPs run their services, and how the CSPs, themselves, are assessed by accredited assessors to verify they are operating their services in conformance with their proclaimed level(s) of assurance and the stated terms of service.

Joni Brennan, Kantara Executive Director said, “Kantara Initiative is dedicated to enabling verified trust in identity services via our CSP Approval Program. We are pleased to welcome Electrosoft as the latest Kantara-Accredited Assessor.” View our Kantara-Accredited Assessors and Approved Services.

“Electrosoft is excited to be part of the Kantara Initiative and a Kantara-Accredited Assessor. We are already engaged in one of the first Kantara assessments and view this as a core business offering. We have established ourselves as thought leaders and subject matter experts in the Identity Management arena. Our employees were part of the core team that authored FIPS 201, Personal Identity Verification for Federal Employees and Contractors, in support of NIST and are named authors on related NIST guidelines” said Electrosoft President Sarbari Gupta. “By choosing Electrosoft, an organization can be assured that world-class subject matter experts in the identity management space are involved and can quickly understand and assess the target system against the appropriate requirements.”

To learn more about Electrosoft, please visit the company’s website.

Based on adoption of the IAF, Kantara Initiative has been approved by the US Federal Government Federal Identity Credential and Access Management team as a Trust Framework Provider qualified to operate at Assurance Levels 1, 2 and 3 non-crypto. Kantara-Approved Services are qualified to issue and manage credentials that can interoperate and access US Government on-line services such as National Institute of Health (NIH) research libraries or Veterans Association (VA) benefits. Kantara Initiative also actively works with international governments in regions including North America, Europe and Pan-Asia, to align this program for multi-jurisdictional adoption.

The Kantara Initiative Assurance Review Board (ARB) reviews applicant Assessors to ensure applicants have the skills, knowledge, experience and processes necessary to reliably perform assessments of CSPs on the behalf of Kantara Initiative.

Kantara-Accredited Assessors perform assessments of CSPs based on the IAF’s Service Assessment Criteria (SAC) and provide a Kantara Assessment Report (KAR) to the ARB. The ARB uses the KAR report as the basis for a recommendation to the Board of Trustees concerning the grant of Kantara-Approved Service status to a CSP, for its given Credential Service.

Kantara is accepting applications for Assessor Accreditation and Credential Service Approval. Visit our Accreditation and Approval Center for more information. Please address queries regarding your application to staff (at) kantarainitiative.org or via our Contact Us form.

Kantara Initiative is an industry and community organization which enables trust in identity services through our compliance programs, requirements development, and information sharing among communities including: industry, research & education, government agencies and international stakeholders.

Dec. 5, 2011 Piscataway, NJ - Kantara Initiative announces the accreditation of two assessors, Deloitte & Touche LLP [1] and eValid8 [2], who are now qualified to perform assessments for the Kantara Identity Assurance Framework for both the Identity Credential and Access Management (ICAM) and non-ICAM Trust Frameworks.

Additionally, Kantara Initiative announced the first high Level of Assurance (LoA) Kantara Service Approval (recognized as ICAM Certification) has been granted to Verizon’s Universal Identity Service at LoA 1-3 non-PKI for use to access U.S. Government online services. (See related press release [3].)

“eValid8 welcomes the challenge of aligning industry providers with this unilateral approach to assuring that business, governments, and end users can conduct business with equivalent credentials” said Brian Dilley, President. eValid8^® offers audited solutions such as TrustedCA^®, TrustedRA^®, and Kantara Initiative Accreditation for trusted identity assurance.

“With this certification, Verizon is at the forefront of driving a new identity ecosystem that better protects users and organizations,” said Peter Tippett, vice president of Verizon. “Using our Kantara-approved credentials, we can offer businesses and government agencies more choices in securing their digital identities with our easy to deploy and use identity services that have now been certified to Level 3.”

The ICAM program is seen by industry veterans as the first implementation of a model to build the Identity Ecosystem which is described in the National Strategy for Trusted Identities in Cyberspace (NSTIC), which aim to create a trusted Identity Ecosystem that uses trusted-industry issued credentials to access U.S. Federal Government Services. Trust is measured via the certification programs of U.S. Government Trust Framework Providers (TFPs). Kantara Initiative is the only US Government TFP authorized to perform Service Approvals at Levels of Assurance (LoAs) 1, 2 and 3 (non-PKI) of services to connect industry-issued credentials with US Government Services.

The market for high LoA credentials has since further developed by an Office of Management and Budget (OMB) memo [4] issued to U.S. Chief Information Officers (CIOs) that requires LoA 1 certified credentials be implemented for new government service web sites within 90 days of the first TFP final approval or when existing websites are enhanced or upgraded and LoA 2 and 3 non-crypto certified credentials be adopted for higher value U.S. Government agency services within the near term.

The Kantara Identity Assurance Accreditation and Service Approval Program assesses applicants against its strict criteria ensuring, among other things, alignment with the OMB 04-04 and NIST 800-63 LoAs [5] and grants successful 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.

Kantara Initiative is currently accepting appropriate applications to Accredit Assessors and Approve Credential Service Providers (CSPs) (a.k.a. Identity Providers – IdPs) to issue certified credentials for the ICAM Trust Framework. Additionally, the broad and unique cross section of industry and multi-jurisdictional stakeholders within the Kantara Membership, have the opportunity to create profiles that add additional criteria to the core Identity Assurance Framework for applicability to their specific communities of trust.

For further information or to become Kantara Accredited or Approved (ICAM Certified), please visit our Kantara Accreditation and Approval Center [6] and contact support@kantarainitiative.org.

About Kantara Initiative:
Kantara Initiative is a global, open, public-private, technology-agnostic forum comprised of identity ecosystem stakeholders. Its inspired mission is to promote federation interoperability and harmonization; to develop policy frameworks for operational interoperability and to provide certification and assessment programs to grow trust in the standards, products, and service deployments. For more information about getting involved in Kantara Initiative, visit http://kantarainitiative.org.

[1]   http://www.deloitte.com/view/en_US/us/Services/audit-enterprise-risk-services/finance-operations-controls-transformation/index.htm

[2]   http://www.evalid8.com

[3]   http://www.verizonbusiness.com/about/news/displaynews.xml?newsid=25849&mode=vzlong

[4]   http://www.cio.gov/documents/OMBReqforAcceptingExternally_IssuedIdCred10-6-2011.pdf

[5]  http://csrc.nist.gov/publications/nistpubs/800-63/SP800-63V1_0_2.pdf

[6]   http://bit.ly/Kantara_Assurance_Accreditation_Approval

Piscataway, NJ – November 1, 2011: The Kantara Initiative announced today the final approval of their Trust Framework Provider (TFP) program as the only Approved US Government TFP certifying Levels of Assurance (LoA) 1, 2 and 3 non-crypto (non-PKI) [1].

This announcement follows the recent Office Management Budget (OMB) memo to US Chief Information Officers (CIOs) [2] which requires LoA 1 certified credentials be implemented within 90 days of the first TFP final approval for new websites or when existing websites are enhanced or upgraded and LoA 2 and 3 non-crypto certified credentials be adopted for higher value US Government agency services within the near term.

Lucy Lynch, Director of Trust and Identity Initiatives, Internet Society, said, “The final approval of Kantara Initiative’s Identity Credential Access Management (ICAM) Trust Framework Provider program marks a major milestone in the advancement and adoption of well-assured credentials for use to access US Government on-line services. This emerging public-private partnership can also serve as an example for the deployment of similar multi-national and multi-stakeholder programs.“

The Kantara Identity Assurance Accreditation and Certification Program [3] is committed to the adoption of the Trust Framework model as the means to build a public-private partnership 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 (also known as Identity Providers) based on the Kantara Initiative’s Identity Assurance Framework.

“Consistent with the National Strategy for Trusted Identities in Cyberspace (NSTIC), the Federal government has pledged to be an early adopter of credentialing solutions certified through Trust Framework Providers,” said Jeremy Grant, who is leading the implementation of NSTIC as Senior Executive Advisor for Identity Management at the National Institute for Standards and Technology (NIST). “Approval of the Kantara Initiative Identity Assurance Accreditation and Certification Program marks a major milestone in the advancement of a public-private partnership toward the realization of a more trusted and secure Identity Ecosystem. We commend Kantara for being the first approved Trust Framework Provider, and hope many other organizations will soon also achieve this distinction.”

The Kantara Identity Assurance Accreditation and Certification Program assesses applicants against its assessment criteria ensuring, amongst other things, alignment with the NIST 800-63 Levels of Assurance [4] and grants successful 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.

For further information or to become Kantara ICAM Accredited or Certified please contact support@kantarainitaitive.org.

About Kantara Initiative: 
Kantara Initiative is a global, open, public-private, technology-agnostic forum comprised of identity ecosystem stakeholders. Its inspired mission is to promote federation interoperability and harmonization; to develop policy frameworks for operational interoperability and to provide certification and assessment programs to grow trust in the standards, products, and service deployments. For more information about getting involved in Kantara Initiative, visit http://kantarainitiative.org/

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

[1] http://www.idmanagement.gov/pages.cfm/page/IDManagement-open-identity-solutions-for-open-government

[2] http://www.cio.gov/documents/OMBReqforAcceptingExternally_IssuedIdCred10-6-2011.pdf

[3] http://kantarainitiative.org/confluence/display/certification/Identity+Assurance+Certification+Program

[4] http://csrc.nist.gov/publications/nistpubs/800-63/SP800-63V1_0_2.pdf

Kantara Initiative has announced the release of a Draft Recommendation for the User-Managed Access (UMA) protocol. UMA heralds a new era of user-centric access control for web-based applications such as social networking sites, content-sharing portals, and personal clouds.

PISCATAWAY, NJ, USA – July 7, 2011 – As we spend more time online, our data becomes more prolific and widely dispersed across sites. Data privacy and security have become onerous issues. Kantara Initiative’s User-Managed Access Work Group (UMA WG) has published a Draft Recommendation for a user-managed data access protocol and contributed it to the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) standards body to solve these problems.

UMA lets web application creators easily craft systems that give control of data back to the people. Any web-based data ecosystem can leverage UMA, including eHealth and eGov portals, social networking sites, photo sharing portals, and personal data stores. It offers individuals centralized security, privacy, and control for sharing data with friends and family, business associates, and organizations. And it allows apps to offer sophisticated privacy and sharing options without a lot of software development. One UMA implementation, the SMART system from Newcastle University, leverages Facebook friends for sharing; others could use the new Google+ Circles system, which allows sharing within circles of contacts.

Aad van Moorsel, Director of the Newcastle University Centre for Cybercrime and Computer Security, says: “The UK government will increasingly offer Internet-based services. The data shared in such services can be sensitive since it may include employment history, exam results or health information. UMA provides the technology to share such data safely, putting the citizen in control. We strongly believe UMA will be a cornerstone for future eGov services, and are working to publish our SMART software as an Open Source UMA implementation.”

Mario Hoffmann, Head of Secure Services & Quality Testing of Fraunhofer AISEC, remarks: “User empowerment serves as a key enabler for trustworthy and trusted service usage on the Internet. UMA supports developers through a security -and privacy-by-design approach. The user-centric concept of UMA is the basis for managing access policies to personal, data, claims, and attributes in a unified, balanced and comfortable way.”

Drummond Reed, Founder and Chairman of Connect.Me, comments: “This milestone for UMA could not come at a better time – interest in user-managed data sharing is exploding. Social networks have made people more comfortable with online sharing, and now UMA brings us a standard way for users to share data across many different sites and services without losing control of that information. Connect.Me looks forward to bringing the power of UMA to our users.”

Iain Henderson, Co-Founder of the Mydex Community Interest Company, says: “The publication of the draft specs for UMA is a great step forward in enabling the individual to better realise the value of their personal information. The Mydex team sees this release as of direct relevance to a number of existing initiatives in both public and private sectors, and we look forward to deploying it later in 2011.”

The WG will demonstrate UMA’s benefits in a public webinar on Wednesday, July 13, at 9am Pacific time. All are welcome to attend.

Register and find out more at http://tinyurl.com/umawg.

“Like” UMA on Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/UserManagedAccess.

Follow the group on Twitter at http://www.twitter.com/umawg and hashtag #UMAWG.

About Kantara Initiative
http://kantarainitiative.org/

About the UMA WG
http://tinyurl.com/umawg

###

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

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

Patient Identity Service Delivers Privacy-enhancing Patient Control of Health Information – putting the Patient at the Center of their own Health Care Using New Technologies

Piscataway, NJ – March 1, 2011 – Kantara Initiative and the eCitizen Foundation are pleased to announce the kick-off of the Patient ID Service (PIDS) project. The PIDS project is an effort to develop a new patient identity information architecture that will put patients at the center of their own health care. The project will work to help patients secure access to their doctors and medical records through health information networks like the new Nationwide Health Information Network. The project will be conducted by the eCitizen Foundation in collaboration with Kantara Initiative’s Healthcare Identity Assurance Work Group (HIA WG). Additionally, this project will benefit from strong multi-national stakeholder support within the Kantara Initiative community.

Thanks to strong support from the OpenID Foundation of Japan (OIDF-Japan) and funding from Kantara Initiative, the eCitizen Foundation is well poised for completion of Phase One (planning) of this project on behalf of the HIA WG.

Phase Two of this project will be an implementation of a patient identity service using the identity architecture developed in Phase One. This implementation will serve as an open model for all, especially in the development of Health Information and Health Benefit Exchanges and in the adoption of Electronic and Personal Health Records. Incorporation of such a patient identity service by existing and new service providers will provide patients with a necessary tool to protect their privacy and securely access their health records.

Providers will benefit as the patient identity service enables meeting “Meaningful Use” requirements such as Patient Access mandated under recent federal statutes that will be used as a basis for incentive payments to health care providers. The service will allow patients to request and receive medical records from their doctors, a key requirement for compensation under the new federal law.

In the proposed Use Case, an example patient, a student from State A away at college in State B, needs health care for a condition initially treated at home in State A. While at college, the patient needs to seek follow-up or related treatment from a provider in State B. Previous medical records will help in the new treatment and reduce overall costs for treatment. The patient will request medical records from the home-state provider, receive the records in a personal health record, and share that information with the new provider in State B.

According to John Fraser, CEO of ApeniMED (formerly MEDNET), and one of three co-chairs of the HIA WG managing this project, “This project will help patients more securely communicate with their doctors and other providers to improve patient care and to solve one of the new federal requirements for doctors. I look forward to working with my other co-Chairs, Pete Palmer of SureScripts, and Rick Moore of eHealth Ohio, to further this important service to support patients and providers using the emerging Nationwide Health Information Network.”

Shingo Yamanaka, Executive Director of OIDF-Japan, said “User Centric Personal Data Exchange is a key component of the next generation society, and we see that emerging OpenID ABC standard will be an important enabling piece of it. We very much look forward to the architecture arising from this project to feed back to the spec development process.”

Organizations who would seek to assist eCitizen, OIDF-Japan and Kantara Initiative to advance this project should contact Joni Brennan with interested inquiries.

About Kantara Initiative
http://kantarainitiative.org/

About eCitizen Foundation
http://www.ecitizenfoundation.org/2011/02/patient-identity.html

About OpenID Foundation Japan
http://openid.net/2008/02/28/openid_foundation_local_chapters/

###

Media Contact
Joni Brennan
Executive Director
+1 732 226 4223
joni[at]kantarainitiative[dot]org

San Francisco, CA – February 14, 2011 — 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 two applications have won the 2011 IDDY (Identity Deployment of the Year) Award. The IDDY Deployment award winners are Newcastle University and National Institutes of Health iTrust.

The IDDYs will be presented today at the Identity Collaboration Day jointly produced by Kantara Initiative and Identity Commons in San Francisco, CA.

“As the speed of innovation accelerates in the Identity Management arena, new business models and use cases are emerging,” says Matthew Gardiner, Director CA Security Business & President, Kantara Initiative. “The IDDY Awards formally recognizes these innovations and their contributions to the digital identity management marketplace.”

Now in its fifth 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. The IDDYs recognize two categories of achievement: ID Deployment and Emerging Applications. The ID Deployment category spotlights applications that are currently delivering significant and quantifiable identity management value to organizations and users. The Emerging Applications category showcases “up-and-coming” applications and proof-of-concepts driving the next generation of digital identity management solutions.

Judges evaluated 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.

Winner in the ID Deployment Category: NIH iTrust
“We are pleased to win the Deployment category as this means recognition of NIH’s leadership in accepting open standards-based third party identity credentials at US government websites,” said Debbi Bucci, NIH Integration Services Center Manager, Center for Information Technology (CIT).

NIH iTrust is multi-protocol enterprise authentication service that allows users to access multiple applications with a single third-party user credential. NIH iTrust enables federated identity management, allowing users both within and outside of NIH to access multiple applications and data sources across agencies, using their local identity credentials. It provides application owners with an easy and secure way to authenticate users and control access to sensitive data by leveraging third-party SAML and OpenID based credentials. More information about the project is available at https://federation.nih.gov/itrust/

Winner in the Emerging Applications/Proof of Concept Category: Newcastle University
“With the increased amount of services available on the Web, the end user is no longer able to easily control access to their distributed data and is often paying the price in both privacy and convenience” said Maciej Machulak who leads the SMART project. “User-Managed Access and SMART aim to provide a solution to this problem. These approaches allow people to apply the necessary security and privacy controls to their personal data while retaining all the benefits of social interactions and data sharing that the Web environment offers.”

SMART solution is the first Java implementation of the User-Managed Access (UMA) protocol developed at Newcastle University as part of a JISC-funded project. It allows users to have centralised, flexible and fine-grained control over access to their personal information on the Web. Users define their sharing preferences at a single Authorization Manager using an intuitive user interface for creating identity-based and claims-based policies. Such sharing settings can be later applied to distributed data hosted by UMA-enabled Web applications, such as the online storage and gallery services provided as part of the SMART solution. More information about the project is available at http://smartjisc.wordpress.com and http://www.tinyurl.com/uma-wg

About the Kantara Initiative 2011 IDDY Award Judging Panel

The IDDY Awards judging panel is comprised of ten identity management and privacy and policy experts from around the globe, working collectively to evaluate applications that follow specified judging criteria:
- J. Trent Adams, Trust and Identity Outreach Specialist, Internet Society
- Bob Bragdon, Publisher, CSO Magazine
- Philippe Clement, Head of Identity Marketing, Orange – FT
- Matthew Gardiner, Director CA Security Business & Kantara Initiative President
- Gerry Gebel, President, Axiomatics
- Leif Johansson, Systems Specialist at NORDUnet & SUNET
- Nate Klinginstein, Senior Technical Analyst, Internet2
- Martin Kuppinger, Founder and Principle Analyst, Kuppinger, Cole & Partner
- Nat Sakimura, Senior Researcher, NRI
- Don Thibeau, Chairman, OIX

About Kantara Initiative
Kantara Initiative is a global, open, public-private, technology-agnostic forum comprised of identity ecosystem stakeholders. Its inspired mission is to promote technical interoperability and harmonization; to develop policy frameworks for operational interoperability and to provide certification and assessment programs to grow trust in the standards, products, and service deployments. For more information about getting involved in Kantara Initiative, visit http://kantarainitiative.org/

###

Media Contact
Joni Brennan
Kantara Initiative
joni@kantarainitiative.org
+1 732-226-4223

Piscataway, NJ, July 27, 2010 – Open Identity Exchange (OIX) and Kantara Initiative announced today that they will begin collaborating on digital trust framework development to build and promote adoption of a robust online trust ecosystem. Digital trust frameworks enable trust in transactions such as logins, registrations, and online eCommerce by allowing digital identity credentials produced by one site to be accepted at other sites.
Kantara Initiative and OIX, the industry’s two leading organizations focused on trust framework infrastructure, have agreed to the following high-level goals for collaboration:

1. Develop a joint approach to federation services and trust framework certification that takes advantage of the complementary features of the Kantara Initiative Identity Assurance Framework (IAF) and the OIX Trust Framework Platform.
2. Develop technology and policy best practice guidelines in response to growing needs for trust frameworks spanning all types of networks, transactions, and jurisdictions around the globe.
3. Identify additional trust framework infrastructure, operations, and testing areas of synergy.

The two organizations have agreed to jointly submit their own certification assessment results into an operational database which would be hosted by OIX to provide a consolidated view of certification status. An early version of the operational database instance will be a part of the Burton Catalyst Open Identity for Business demo event in July 2010.

Additionally, Kantara Initiative will begin offering their IAF Profiles as trust framework options within the OIX Trust Framework Platform which will allow OIX member companies to obtain certification against IAF Profiles and have these certifications included directly in the OIX Certification Listing Service.

To further develop this collaborative relationship, representatives of the Kantara Initiative will join the OIX Advisory Board, and OIX will join the Kantara Initiative Identity Assurance Working Group (IAWG).

“Kantara Initative’s collaboration with OIX represents a significant advancement in identity management that will serve to promote security and trust to various digital identity stakeholders (Identity Service Providers, Credential Service Providers, Relying Parties and End-Users, Federation Operators) across multiple technology platforms,” says Matthew Gardiner, Kantara Initiative president and director, CA Technologies Security customer solutions unit.

“Our collaboration effort with Kantara Initiative shows how identity services can enable business at multiple levels of assurance and across multiple protocols and multiple federations,” said Don Thibeau, OIX president. “The governmental efforts to offer open identity solutions, such as the White House’s recently announced National Strategy for Trusted Identities in Cyberspace (NSTIC), are one tangible example of this.”

“Reliable identity information is increasingly critical for electronic business. Until recently, there was no way for an enterprise to know whether identity information provided by third parties was trustworthy and accurate. The US ICAM Trust Framework Provider Adoption Process has provided the foundation for an ecosystem of trustworthy identity providers, but ICAM’s efforts will only be effective if trust framework providers and identity providers adopt it.” said Bob Blakley, VP and Research Director, Burton Group.

”The collaboration between Kantara Initiative and OIX marks a significant milestone on the ongoing work to ensure the highest levels of trust across all assurance levels for today’s online transactions,” said Andrew Nash, Sr. Director of Identity Services PayPal.

About Open Identity Exchange
The Open Identity Exchange (OIX) is a neutral, technology agnostic, nonprofit provider of certification trust frameworks for online identity. Its certification credentials can be used across multiple sites, jurisdictions and networks. OIX was founded by grants from the OpenID and Information Card Foundations and support from companies including Google, PayPal, AT&T, Equifax, VeriSign, Verizon, and CA technologies. For more information, visit www.openidentityexchange.org.

About Kantara Initiative
Kantara Initiative is a global, open, public-private, technology-agnostic forum comprised of identity ecosystem stakeholders. Kantara Initiative’s inspired mission is to promote technical interoperability and harmonization; to develop policy frameworks for operational interoperability and; to provide certification and assessment programs to grow trust in the standards, products, and service deployments. Kantara Initiative freely provides the governance and resources whereby diverse members of the ecosystem successfully collaborate on a diverse portfolio of common policy frameworks, technical specifications and deployment guidelines driven by the identity community, industry and governments from around the world. For more information about getting involved in Kantara Initiative, visit www.kantarainitiative.org.

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Media Contacts
Michelle Hunt
Kantara Initiative
Michelle.Hunt@ieee-isto.org
+1 732 981-3434

John Ehrig
Open Identity Exchange
jehrig@inventures.com
+1 925 275-6677

Authorization Standards Workshop Also Being Held at Burton Group Catalyst Conference North America 2010.

Piscataway, NJ, July 19, 2010 – Kantara Initiative, an open forum providing identity ecosystem members the opportunity to collaboratively address harmonization and interoperability challenges that exist between identity systems, Web 2.0 applications and services, and Web-based initiatives, is participating in an Open Identity for Business Interop demonstration and an Authorization Standards Workshop at this year’s Burton Catalyst event in San Diego, on July 27.

Kantara Initiative is collaborating with members of the OpenID Foundation, the Information Card Foundation, the Open Identity Exchange, and Identity Commons to demonstrate uses of open identity as a business enabler in the Open Identity for Business Interop. This event will showcase:

• Practical applications of the work activity of the US Identity, Credential and Access Management (ICAM) Subcommittee, National Institutes of Health, and their partners
• Examples of using different levels of assurance across multiple trust federations
• Illustrations of how open identity is moving to mobile devices and enabling new types of mobile applications
• New browser-based applications that use identity services to automate cross-site user experiences

“Today’s organizations have new choices when it comes to working with the identities of their partners, citizens, suppliers, and customers – choices that can reduce costs, increase trust and create new business opportunities,” says Don Thibeau, Chairman of the Open Identity Exchange. “The Open Identity Exchange is collaborating with the Kantara Initiative and others on the Open Identity for Business Interop featured at this year’s Catalyst conference to show tangible examples of how identity services can enable business at multiple levels of assurance and across multiple protocols and multiple federations.”

“The use cases highlighted during this workshop held at Burton Catalyst are excellent examples of how Kantara Initiative works openly with the Identity community to fulfill its mission to foster interoperability, innovation and broad adoption through the development of open identity specifications and education programs,” added John Bradley, an independent ID management consultant and chairman of Kantara Initiative’s Federation Interoperability working group.

Kantara Initiative is also spearheading the Authorization Standards Workshop to be held on July 27th at 12:30pm PDT. This interactive workshop will explore the most current developments and trends in authorization standards, including OAuth (a community initiative now being standardized within the IETF), User-Managed Access (being developed within the Kantara Initiative) and XACML (an OASIS standard). Workshop attendees will also examine some authorization use cases that may drive new standards requirements.

“A combination of presentations, panels and demonstrations given by Kantara Initiative members will demonstrate how existing and emerging authorization standards fit into the enterprise and social web infrastructure,” says Paul Madsen, identity management researcher, NTT and Kantara Initiative chairman for Concordia DG and ID-WSF Evolution WG.

If you are interested in attending the Authorization Standards Workshop, please RSVP to Dervla O’Reilly, dervla[at]kantarainitiative[dot]org.

About Kantara Initiative
Kantara Initiative is a global, open, public-private, technology-agnostic forum comprised of identity ecosystem stakeholders. Kantara initiative’s inspired mission is to promote technical interoperability and harmonization; to develop policy frameworks for operational interoperability and; to provide certification and assessment programs to grow trust in the standards, products, and service deployments. Kantara Initiative freely provides the governance and resources whereby diverse members of the ecosystem successfully collaborate on a diverse portfolio of common policy frameworks, technical specifications and deployment guidelines driven by the identity community, industry and governments from around the world. For more information about getting involved in Kantara Initiative, visit http://kantarainitiative.org/.

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Media Contact
Michelle Hunt
Kantara Initiative
Michelle.Hunt@ieee-isto.org
+1 732 981-3434