Netegrity Broadens Federated ID Standard Base

The identity management company introduced its newest Universal Federation Architecture (UFA), adding support for two new secure data exchange standards--Liberty Alliance ID-FF and WS-Federation, said Amit Jasuja, vice president of product management at Netegrity, Waltham, Mass.

Federated identity management is a growing business that allows trusted partners to access specific data and services from one another by way of secure exchange standards such as SAML.

With support already in place for the common federated identity standard SAML 1.0, and support for SAML 1.1 available in 90 days, Netegrity's UFA gives VARs and end users the ability to offer a wider range of secure connection protocols when adding partners to a federated network, said Jasuja. Adding support for the WS-Federation standard is particularly useful for federated business networks requiring secure linkage to Web-based services, he added.

"WS-Federation uses SAML to do federation for Web services," Jasuja said.

UFA allows for the logon of multiple federated partners with a single, secure-access process. And an affiliate service is available to ease the addition of new partners to a federated business portal by way of Netegrity's SiteMinder, a SAML-based software agent.

A wider range of choice when it comes to available standards for federated identity management customers is just what Eric Norlin, senior vice president of strategic marketing for Ping Identity Corporation, Denver, is looking for.

"We have identity-specific use cases for what federated identity is used for. But the problem is that with all these use cases, you will run into the use of different standards. So when a company like Netegrity announces multiprotocol support, they don't eliminate any of my potential customers," Norlin said.

Netegrity sells direct but is looking to add channel partners to help expand its customer reach, Jasuja said.