Liberty Alliance Releases Final Version of ID-WSF 2.0 Web Services Standards

1 January 1970

Liberty Alliance, the global identity consortium working to build a more trusted Internet for consumers, governments and businesses worldwide, today announced the release of the final version of ID-WSF 2.0, the industry's most complete framework for building and managing privacy-respecting, secure and interoperable Web services and Service Oriented Architectures (SOAs). Liberty Alliance will hold a public Webcast to review ID-WSF 2.0 functionality on Thursday, October 5 from 8:00 - 9:00am US Pacific Time.

The final release of ID-WSF 2.0 now includes additional support for open industry standards to allow developers, enterprises and system integrators to build successful Web services faster based on the widely deployed and proven interoperable Liberty Web Services standards. Today's release also includes Liberty People Service(TM), the industry's first user-centric Web services protocol for managing a user's relationship network across social applications in a trusted, secure and privacy-respecting manner.

Liberty Alliance is the only global identity organization that develops identity standards with the input of all members and based on well defined business requirements and use cases. Liberty's process of clearly identifying business requirements prior to developing any standard ensures that Liberty Web Services immediately meet the real world identity management needs of deploying organizations and users worldwide. With today's news, Liberty Alliance is also releasing the use cases and market requirements used to develop the ID-WSF 2.0 Web services standards. These documents are available for public viewing and download at http://www.projectliberty.org/liberty/strategic_initiatives/requirements

"Liberty's ID-WSF 2.0 provides organizations with a complete framework for more easily deploying privacy-respecting and secure Web services and SOAs," said George Goodman president of the Liberty Alliance management board and director of the platform capabilities lab at Intel. "With Liberty Web Services deployed worldwide, organizations can trust that open identity management solutions based on ID-WSF 2.0 will deliver real business value today and over the long-term."

Deployers of Liberty Web Services include American Express, AOL, France Telecom, Nokia, and Vodafone as well as government organizations in Finland, France and Norway. These real world deployments are helping to drive the over one billion Liberty-enabled identities and devices Liberty Alliance is expecting this year. A list of some of the organizations deploying Liberty's open identity specifications is available at http://projectliberty.org/liberty/adoption. Highlights of functionality included in today's release of ID-WSF 2.0 include:

Safer Social Networking

Today's release of ID-WSF 2.0 includes Liberty People Service, the industry's first non-proprietary user-centric Web services framework to allow consumers and organizations to manage social and enterprise applications such as bookmarks, blogging, calendars, e-mail, photo sharing and instant messaging in a federated social network. With Liberty People Service individuals can easily store, maintain, and categorize online relationships with friends, family and colleagues so that other socially-aware Web services applications can leverage identity information based on the consent and privacy controls established by the user. These user-centric features provide consumers and enterprise users with greater protection against phishing, pharming, vishing, and other forms of online identity theft. More information about Liberty People Service is available at http://www.project-liberty.org/liberty/resource_center/faq/people_service__ 1

SOA Ready

Liberty's secure and privacy-respecting ID-WSF 2.0 provides organizations with a complete framework for deploying and managing interoperable, non-proprietary and trusted SOAs. ID-WSF 2.0 is available to all organizations looking to implement responsive, flexible and secure identity-based SOAs based on the proven interoperability of Liberty Web Services. ID-WSF 2.0 specifications provide an "out-of-the-box" framework for jump-starting SOA implementations with user-centric controls, security and trust at the application level and privacy features at the core.

Proven Interoperability

Liberty Alliance is the only global identity organization that tests vendor products for true interoperability of identity standards. Nearly 75 products from vendors around the world have now passed testing since Liberty launched its Liberty Interoperable(TM) program in 2003. Gemalto, Epok, HP, Sun Microsystems, Novell, Nokia, NTT and Symlabs have passed testing for Liberty Web Services interoperability. With today's news Liberty Alliance is also announcing the first testing event for IDWSF-2.0 interoperability scheduled to take place in France during the week of December 4th. This event is open to Liberty and non-Liberty members with more information and registration available at http://projectliberty.org/liberty/liberty_interoperable/events

Privacy, Security and Trust for Every Transaction

ID-WSF 2.0 has been developed to provide non-proprietary, user-centric identity management capabilities in support of all identity-based online transactions. From basic authentication requirements to enterprise, financial and government applications demanding the highest degree of interoperability, privacy and security protection, IDWSF-2.0 delivers consumers, businesses, citizens and governments the industry's most comprehensive framework for conducting safer Web services transactions.

Convergence of Web Service Standards

Liberty Alliance regularly incorporates truly open standards into its identity specifications based on industry and member requirements for open and interoperable identity solutions. With the final release of IDW-SF 2.0, Liberty Web Services now offers increased support for SAML 2.0 to allow SAML 2.0 assertions to be used as security tokens; incorporates WS-Addressing to enable asynchronous messaging capabilities; features new subscription and notification capabilities to allow a push-model for attribute sharing; and supports identity tokens to provide a structured mechanism to refer to a user inside the network.

An Open Cross-Industry Framework for Growth

ID-WSF 2.0 is a complete and flexible framework designed to deliver organizations of all sizes real value in interoperable identity management solutions. In addition to the release of Liberty People Service, Liberty Alliance members work to continuously increase Web services functionality with specifications that build on the security and privacy capabilities of ID-WSF 2.0. These open interface specifications include work in support of Directory Access Protocols, Contact Book, Geo-location, Presence and Mobile Messaging Web services applications.

"The final release of ID-WSF 2.0 provides consumers with unmatched user-centric controls for online privacy and security protection and enterprises with new opportunities for deploying more successful identity- based SOAs," said Carolina Canales-Valenzuela, co-chair of the Liberty Alliance Technology Expert Group and Senior Systems Manager at Ericsson. "ID-WSF 2.0 has been developed based on well defined business requirements to ensure organizations of all sizes can quickly realize the privacy and security benefits of Liberty Web Services."

About the October 5 Liberty Alliance Web Services Webcast

The Webcast "Liberty Identity Web Services Framework ID-WSF 2.0: Overview, Opportunity and Application" will be presented by Paul Madsen and Carolina Canales, Co-chairs of the Liberty Alliance Technology Expert Group on Thursday, October 5, 2006 from 8-9:00 am US PT. Anyone interested in attending this interactive WebEx presentation and Q and A must register first at http://www.projectliberty.org/webex/wsf20/ Liberty Alliance has also released a whitepaper in support of Liberty People Service. Authored by Paul Madsen, the paper "Liberty ID-WSF People Services - federated social identity" is available at http://projectliberty.org/liberty/resource_center/papers

CONTACT:

Russell DeVeau

Liberty Alliance

508-487-6102 - Office

908-251-1549 - Mobile

russ@projectliberty.org

russ.deveau@verizon.net

AOL IM (Russ DeVeau): devcommruss

Source: prnewswire

All trademarks and copyrighted information contained herein are the property of their respective owners.