Industry group releases roadmap for open authentication

OATH, launched more than a year ago by VeriSign, aims to broaden the deployment of strong authentication by helping companies reduce the cost and complexity of the technology. In addition to VeriSign, members include ActivCard, Entrust Technologies, Juniper Networks, and Check Point Software Technologies.

The reference architecture covers four main areas: Client framework, validation framework, client provisioning, and a common data model. It aims to provide open and royalty-free specifications for strong authentication, spur device innnovation, and provide native platform support and interoperability.

"Our intent is to create an open reference architecture that will serve as a powerful mechanism to foster competition and innovation among key solution providers in identity mangement, security service providers, and application developers - all towards a goal of universal strong authentication," Bob Blakley, chairman of the OATH Joint Coordination Committee and chief scientist at IBM, said in a statement.

www.openauthentication.org