Liberty Alliance rings bell for new ID products

The Liberty Alliance has given the latest batch of identity and authentication products--from vendors IBM, NEC, NTT and RSA Security--a passing grade on its stringent interoperability tests.

At a five-day testing event in Tokyo, the products proved that they conform to interoperability standards for Liberty Identity Federation, alliance specifications that enable open federated identity.

Timo Skytta, vice president of the Liberty Alliance, said, "Only when identity products from multiple vendors interoperate will organizations be able to realize all of the benefits of wide-scale federation."

Roger Sullivan, chair of the Liberty Alliance conformance program, said in a statement, "Since Liberty launched the program in 2003, identity products that have passed interoperability testing have been deployed extensively in a variety of industries and vertical market segments worldwide."

Tim Pickard, strategic marketing director at RSA Security, told Silicon.com, "As a long-awaited convergence point between SAML, Liberty and Shibboleth specifications, SAML 2.0 represents the foundation by which federation interoperability will be managed for the foreseeable future."

Pickard described the announcement as representing "important developments in the progress of federation as a key element of a secure and connected Web infrastructure that will enable users around the globe."

Will Sturgeon of Silicon.com reported from London.