Liberty Alliance beefs up web service security

The Liberty Alliance today unveiled the public draft release of its second-generation framework for identity-based web services, dubbed ID-WSF 2.0.

According to the consortium, which promotes federated identity standards and identity-based web services, the framework has been extended to include support for the second version of Security Assertions Markup Language (SAML) 2.0.

The standard specifically defines how SAML 2.0 assertions can be used to communicate identity information among identity-based web services.

"Successful identity management has become a critical factor in application development and the necessary foundation for deploying all web services," said George Goodman, president of Liberty Alliance's management board and director of Intel's Visualization and Trust Lab.

"These specifications provide a blueprint for driving convergence between federated identity and web services specifications, which is a necessary step to complete interoperability."

Gerry Gebel, senior analyst with Burton Group, added: "SAML 2.0 is a significant convergence point in the evolution of federation standards.

"It is important that vendors and other organisations involved in the standards development process provide a clear roadmap to support this latest version of SAML."

The Liberty Alliance said that the second and third phases of the standard, which are expected by the end of 2005, include improvements designed to give greater depth of functionality.