February 15, 2005

An industry consortium concerned with Web services specifications around identity and security, Liberty Alliance, has put out the second version of ID-WSF.

The most important feature of ID-WSF 2.0 is the 2,0 release of SAML [security assertions markup language]. Paul Madsen, who works in NTT's Information Sharing Platform Laboratory and co-chairs the Technology Expert Group for Liberty Alliance, explains why.

"A year and a half ago, there were two equivalent protocols enabling single sign-on, SAML and IDFF; the two parallel streams have converged."

Both SAML and other specifications (including geolocation and presence) on which the Liberty Alliance is working are not meant to replace protocols where they already exist, emphasized Madsen.

"Our value-add is to define a standardized identity layer on which those protocols can sit," he says. "Presence can be queried by a number of protocols. Liberty Alliance is about standardized mechanisms for discovery, authentication, and user interaction."

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