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

We invite you to join us for the Kantara Initiative Webcast “Identity Assurance Frameworks within Federated IAM Systems” presented by Joni Brennan, Program Director, Kantara Initiative.

The live Webcast is part of the Identity & Access Management Summit and takes place Thursday, May 6, 7-7:45am PDT. Register via the BrightTALK website: http://bit.ly/IAF_Webcast

Regional program leverages four levels of identity assurance and certified identity services from Kantara Initiative to advance trusted, secure and privacy-respecting applications for healthcare providers and patients

Washington DC, September 24, 2009 – Kantara Initiative, a global identity community working to solve harmonization challenges among enterprise, Web 2.0 and Cloud applications and services, today announced that the South East Michigan Health Information Exchange (SEMHIE) has adopted the Kantara Initiative Identity Assurance Framework (IAF) as its open trust framework for ensuring policy interoperability across identity-enabled healthcare applications and services. The SEMHIE will require organizations participating in the regional healthcare exchange to have identity services certified within the Kantara Initiative Identity Assurance Certification Program. 

“We are adopting the standardized Kantara Initiative Identity Assurance Framework because it has been developed by industry leaders representing the global healthcare, government, financial services and telecom sectors to meet open trust framework requirements based on four levels of identity assurance,” said Helen Hill with SEMHIE and member of the Healthcare Reform Committee for HIMSS. “Hospitals and regional healthcare providers participating in SEMHIE as credential service providers will be certified by Kantara Initiative to demonstrate they have met identity assurance criteria, ensuring policy interoperability across the region and the highest degree of security and privacy for patients.”

The SEMHIE is a multi-stakeholder initiative dedicated to delivering the promise of integrated health information exchange throughout Southeast Michigan. When successfully deployed, SEMHIE will enhance patient care, quality and safety; increase effectiveness and efficiency of healthcare delivery: and reduce healthcare costs. More information about SEMHIE is available at http://www.semhie.org/

“With the adoption of four levels of identity assurance and certified identity services from Kantara Initiative, the SEMHIE is at the forefront of successfully addressing the policy interoperability challenges involved in establishing trusted identity federations across industries and sectors,” said Frank Villavicencio, executive director, NetStar-1, Inc. and chair of the Kantara Initiative Identity Assurance Work Group.

 About the Kantara Initiative Identity Assurance Certification Program

The Kantara Initiative Identity Assurance Certification program certifies that identity services have met business and policy criteria for each of the four identity assurance levels outlined in the technology agnostic IAF. 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. More information is available at http://tinyurl.com/r6le4r.

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