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/

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

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