The Liberty Alliance Project was formed to establish an open standard for federated network identity. Federated identity answers many of the inefficiencies and complications of network identity management that both businesses and consumers face in today's world. Federated identity allows users to "link" elements of their identity between accounts without centrally storing all of their personal information. It also enables:
- Businesses to create new relationships with each other and to realize business objectives quicker, more securely and at a lower cost.
- Businesses to more easily and securely provision accounts and provide access to the right resources.
- Consumers and employees a far more satisfactory on-line experience as well as new levels of personalization, security and control over identity information.
The goal of the Liberty Alliance is to create specifications that incorporate, leverage and support other industry standards, allowing members and organizations to build products and services that will interoperate and promote secure federated identity management. Liberty specifications are built on existing open industry standards such as SAML (new window), SOAP (new window), XML, and WS-Security (new window).
Liberty Alliance Web Services specifications
- Identity Federation Framework (ID-FF)
- Identity Web Services Framework (ID-WSF)
- Identity Service Interface Specifications (ID-SIS)
More information: Liberty Alliance Project website (new window).
More on the general topic: Cross-industry consortia
- Business Process Modeling Initiative (BPMI.org)
- Data Center Markup Language (DCML) Interest Group
- Distributed Management Task Force (DMTF)
- electronic business using eXtensible Markup Language (ebXML)
- Information Technology Research and Standardization Center (INSTAC)
- Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF)
- Java Community Process (JCP)
- Object Management Group (OMG)
- Open Applications Group, Inc. (OAGi)
- Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC)
- The Open Group
- Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards (OASIS)
- RosettaNet
- Web Services Interoperability Organization (WS-I)
- Workflow Management Coalition (WfMC)
- World Wide Web Consortium (W3C)
- www.udef.com
- XBRL International
- XML/EDI Group
