Kantara Initiative Announces Signicat as one of the winners of the 2009 IDDY Award

Kantara Initiative, a global identity community working to solve harmonization and interoperability challenges among identity-enabled enterprise, Web 2.0 and Cloud applications and services, today announced that six applications have won a 2009 IDDY (Identity Deployment of the Year) Award. The IDDY Deployment award winners include Google and Plaxo; Signicat; and the U.S. Department of Defense. The winning IDDY Proof of Concept (POC) awards include fun communications; Gemalto and Vodafone; and NRI, NTT and Oracle. The IDDYs were presented today at CSO magazine’s Digital ID World 2009 in Las Vegas, NV.

“Winners of the 2009 IDDY Award reflect the evolving identity landscape, where applications are leveraging a wide range of protocols and collaboration is key to moving the global identity industry forward,” said Brett McDowell, executive director, Kantara Initiative. “With more joint submissions than any other year and nominations spanning industries and regions, we congratulate the six winning applications from ten different organizations for demonstrating some of the most innovative and diverse identity solutions in the marketplace today.”

Now in its fourth year, the IDDY program has grown within Kantara Initiative to recognize the individuals and organizations developing identity-enabled applications built using any open identity technology. Judges evaluate nominations based on criteria that include the benefits applications deliver to communities, businesses, governments and people; the ROI the application demonstrates; and how the solution may successfully address identity issues such as reducing identity theft, meeting regulatory requirements, and providing users with increased security and privacy protection.

Winners in the Deployment Category:

Google and Plaxo - Google and Plaxo have won an IDDY Deployment award for their collaborative work in the development of a “hybrid onboarding” solution designed to increase the success rate of users finishing the registration process with a social network. The solution uses a combination of open technologies referred to as the "OpenStack," which includes OAuth, OpenID, Portable Contacts and XRDS. Because the implementation uses open technologies, the solution can be easily replicated by others to optimize onboarding between any OpenID Provider (OP) and Relying Party (RP) pairing. With a success rate of 92 percent, the application enhances the user experience while providing increased security and privacy protections. The service was deployed by Google and Plaxo in early 2009 and is currently available to hundreds of millions of Google users. A presentation reviewing the application is available at http://tinyurl.com/ok8u9x

Signicat – Signicat has won an IDDY Deployment award for the development of an online hosted Identity Provider that is offered as a managed service to private and public sector enterprises and organizations in the Nordic Region (Norway, Sweden, Denmark and Finland). The service acts as an intermediary to provide organizations with easy and secure access to the region’s eID (electronic ID) infrastructure. The solution supports SAML for strong authentication and SAML and OpenID for Web Single Sign On, as well as eSignature for workflow and long-time archiving of signed documents. The Identity Provider went live in October 2005, and is currently used by approximately thirty organizations giving access to over 12 million pre-authenticated identities. More information is available at www.signicat.com.

U.S. Department of Defense – The U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) has won an IDDY Deployment Award for SPOT (Synchronized Pre-Deployment and Operational Tracker), a Web-based enterprise networking solution used by the DoD for precise tracking and management of assets supporting US forces deployed overseas. The contractor cross-credentialing with SPOT has been developed and launched in collaboration between the U.S. Department of Defense and the Federation for Identity and Cross-Credentialing Systems, Inc. (FiXs). The system recognizes identity credentials issued by various government entities as well as compatible, standards-based, certified identity credentials issued by industry to support identity-based transactions between the U.S. Government, various international coalition governments, and supporting industry contractors and suppliers. SPOT provides visibility into contingency contracts accounting for 10,439 companies and 3,783 active contracts, with the system currently supporting more than 12,650 end users. More information is available by visiting http://www.bta.mil/products/spot.html and http://fixs.org/.

fun communications – fun communications has won an IDDY in the POC category for the development of its WebCard Loyalty solution, a public portal that can be used worldwide. WebCard Loyalty let’s anyone create their own customer loyalty system for the Internet using "virtual loyalty cards" and is based on Information Card Technology. The application combines user-centric identity management and customer loyalty programs such as bonus points, coupon promotions and discounts on partner websites, into a single application. Retailers and portal operators can issue their own virtual loyalty cards that can serve as a reliable means of authentication and authorization. The portal can be adapted to meet individual requirements, and is suitable for issuing all types of virtual identification cards such as student ID cards, library cards and discount cards. More information is available by visiting http://www.fun.de and http://www.webcard-loyalty.com.

Gemalto and Vodafone – Gemalto and Vodafone Group R&D have won an IDDY in the POC category for the development of a solution that adds strong authentication capabilities to OpenID using a Universal Integrated Circuit Card (UICC, typically a SIM card) inserted in a handset or inside a USB token, and is using either public key infrastructure (PKI) or a one-time password (OTP) as the underlying authentication technology. The application allows the use of distinct devices to access the service and to authenticate. The UICC (SIM) is used as a networked cryptographic computer exposing authentication services accessible via IP protocols. This provides users with new and convenient options for securely accessing OpenID-enabled sites from devices such as a PC, handset or game station. Mobile network operators could offer a service to allow end users to leverage UICC-based OpenID single-sign-on to secure access to Web applications.

NRI, NTT and Oracle – NRI, NTT and Oracle have won and IDDY in the POC category for an application that demonstrates the possibility and practicality of achieving policy interoperability between OpenID and SAML. Both technologies include mechanisms designed to carry identity assurance information; OpenID uses the Provider Authentication Policy Extension (PAPE), while SAML uses its Authentication Context. While the two mechanisms are logically similar, until this proof of concept, they had not been demonstrated to be compatible. The application demonstrates how the number of services where an existing OpenID or SAML credential might be used could be effectively increased.

This year’s winners join the growing list of IDDY Award recipients who have been at the forefront of successfully addressing some of the most challenging technology and policy issues in the global identity sector, with each winner delivering unique benefits to organizations and users. Previous winners of the IDDY include Aetna, Citi, Deutsche Telekom AG (a two-time winner), eBIZ.mobility, EduTech, NTT Labs, UNINETT, the New Zealand Government, Rearden Commerce and the UK Government Authentication Gateway. Kantara Initiative will issue the call for nominations for the 2010 IDDY Awards during 2Q 2010.

About the Kantara Initiative 2009 IDDY Award Judging Panel
The following individuals served on the 2009 Judging Panel: J. Trent Adams, trust & identity outreach specialist, Internet Society and chair of the Kantara Initiative Leadership Council; Mike Beach, CISSP, chief security designer, information security, The Boeing Company; Bob Bragdon, Publisher, CSO Magazine; John Fontana, senior editor, Network World; Gerry Gebel, VP & service director, identity and privacy strategies, Burton Group; Paul Madsen, chair of the Kantara Initiative ID-WSF Evolution Work Group and identity standards researcher, NTT; RL Bob Morgan, senior technology architect, University of Washington; Nat Sakimura, senior researcher, Nomura Research Institute (NRI); Toby Stevens, director, Enterprise Privacy Group; Roger Sullivan, president of the Kantara Initiative Board of Trustees, president of Liberty Alliance and vice president Oracle Identity Management; and Phil Windley, founder and chief technology officer, Kynetx. Panelists recused themselves from judging in categories where their organization had submitted a nomination. More information about the IDDY Award’s is available at http://tinyurl.com/ldteb2.