Join us next week in Munich for the Kantara Spring Workshop, April 13-14, 2012.  The event is kindly hosted by Fraunhofer AISEC in Garching, just outside Munich, Germany.

The focus for the workshop is; strategic planning, Interoperability, eGovernment, NSTIC and more. Kantara’s Board of Trustees and Working/Discussion Groups will meet to focus on forward planning and future goals.

We hope you can join us in Munich. Contact dervla[at]kantarainitiative[dot]org if any questions.

Registration: http://kantaramunichmtg.eventbrite.com/

Agenda: http://kantarainitiative.org/confluence/display/GI/Kantara+Initiative+Conferences

Please Note: Non-member Independents/Contributors/Students who register by the early-bird deadline are entitled to credit their meeting registration towards an Individual Contributor level membership.

Industry events – Kantara members receive a discount at the following events, contact Dervla O’Reilly for the discount codes dervla[at]kantarainitiative[dot]org:
- The Smart Card Alliance 2012 Payments Summit - Feb 8-10, in Salt Lake City, Utah, USA
- HIMSS HIE Symposium 2012 – Feb. 20, 2012, Las Vegas, Nevada, USA
- Kantara Face-to-Face Meeting - April 13-14 - kindly facilitated by Fraunhofer SIT at their meeting facility, Garching, near Munich, Germany
- Kantara Summit at EIC Conference (detailed agenda to follow) – April 17, Munich Germany

Kantara Initiative Membership Details
- Membership Details & Membership Levels
- Membership Forms:  Membership Agreement & Membership Information Form

Currently in Development: eGov Profile 2.0

Podcast: Download MP3 | Episode Length: 0:15:10 | Filesize: 10 MB

NOTE: This podcast was produced in collaboration with the Kantara Initiative Identity Community Update Discussion Group.

UPDATE FROM A FEW DISCUSSION GROUPS FROM RECENT MEETING
Assurance Review Board (ARB) – The Board of Trustees appointed the ARB to over see the activities of the forth coming Identity Assurance Certification Program. Read more information from each group.

INTEROP TEST RESULTS
Kantara Initiative and Liberty Alliance announced that identity products from Entrust, IBM, Microsoft, Novell, Ping Identity, SAP and Siemens have passed Liberty Interoperable(TM) SAML 2.0 interoperability testing.

SPOTLIGHT ON EVE MALER
Eve is Chair of the User-Managed Access (UMA) Work Group. In addition, Eve served as the Project Concordia Chair/community leader for the last number of years. She was also the first Leadership Council Secretary of Kantara Initiative. Read more.

IDDY AWARDS
We congratulate six applications have won a 2009 IDDY (Identity Deployment of the Year) Award. The IDDYs were presented at CSO magazine’s Digital ID World 2009 in Las Vegas, NV.

BLOG HOTSPOT
Our community continues to blog on a regular basis – follow these posts online. We encourage you to blog and become involved.

UPCOMING EVENTS
All upcoming Kantara-related events; conferences, trade events, webcasts, and more.

SOCIAL NETWORKING
Connect with Kantara Initiative with the various ways our individual and collective voice and experience is reaching the extended community. Read more about our networking channels.

PRESS RELEASES
Entrust, IBM, Microsoft, Novell, Ping Identity, SAP and Siemens Pass Liberty Alliance SAML 2.0 Interoperability Testing – September 30, 2009
Michigan Healthcare Information Exchange Adopts Kantara Initiative Identity Assurance Framework – September 24, 2009
Kantara Initiative Announces Winners of the 2009 IDDY Award – September 15, 2009
Aetna, BT, SUNET and the US GSA Lead New Kantara Initiative Identity Assurance Review Board – August 18, 2009

SPEAKING OPPORTUNITIES
We continue to build our speakers bureau. For those of you who are new members, we are looking for experts who can offer their expertise, Kantara-related, at industry trade events, conferences, co-sponsored workshops/events. These opportunities provide exposure for Kantara therefore we would like to broaden our reach by updating our group of expert speakers. If you are interested in representing Kantara Initiative, please contact Dervla O’Reilly, dervla[at]kantarainitiative[dot]org

August 18, 2009 – 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 representatives from Aetna, BT, SUNET/NORDUNet and the US GSA have taken leadership positions on the Kantara Initiative Assurance Review Board (ARB). The ARB oversees the Grant of Rights for use of the Kantara Initiative Assurance Mark, a mark of quality demonstrating that organizations have met stringent identity management criteria outlined in the protocol independent Identity Assurance Framework (IAF).

Marks will initially be awarded in two categories, one to industry assessors indicating they meet requirements to assess identity services for compliance to the IAF, and one to identity services that have been certified by these assessors against the four identity assurance levels detailed in the IAF. Services earning the Kantara Initiative Assurance Mark have successfully satisfied the organizational management, identity proofing, and credential management criteria associated with each identity assurance level. 

“With today’s news, Kantara Initiative is moving to reduce the business, governance and liability challenges organizations face when adding new partners and customers to their ‘trusted Cloud’ of external services,” said Mark Coderre, head of security architecture for Aetna. “Robust Kantara Initiative certification of identity services across a range of risk assessment criteria allows businesses to quickly establish trust with external parties, and to grow the value of these trusted relationships dynamically.”

Certified identity services eliminate the need for organizations to “reinvent the wheel” each time they need to assess the risk of accepting identity credentials from an outside party, making it easier and faster to deploy new services.

About the ARB

The ARB works with the Kantara Initiative Board of Trustees overseeing the Kantara Initiative Identity Assurance Certification Program, developed by Liberty Alliance and now moving forward within Kantara Initiative. The open membership structure of Kantara Initiative is bringing the right mix of identity assurance stakeholders together to advance certified identity services collaboratively. The first Kantara Initiative Identity Assurance Certification cycle is currently underway. The ARB will award Kantara Initiative Assurance Marks based on the results of this event. More information is available here http://tinyurl.com/r6le4r