Liberty Alliance SAML 2.0 Interoperability Testing Cleared by Vendors

Kantara Initiative, a joint effort that works toward interoperability and compliance at different levels, and Liberty Alliance, a standards organization that provides a holistic approach to identity through open technical specifications, have jointly announced that identity products from a number of well known vendors have cleared the Liberty Interoperable SAML 2.0 interoperability testing. These vendors include Entrust, IBM (News - Alert), Microsoft, Novell, Ping Identity, SAP and Siemens.

 

These vendors had earlier participated in a test against the new eGovernment SAML 2.0 profile v1.5 recently released by Liberty Alliance. Further, they entered the third Liberty Interoperable full-matrix testing event to be administered by the Drummond Group Inc.

 

Vendors from any part of the world can participate in the Web-based full-matrix testing, and have to go through a rigorous process to ensure the products meet SAML 2.0 interoperability requirements for open, secure and privacy-respecting federated identity management.

 

As more and more vendors the world over are increasingly deploying SAML 2.0 products and the increasing number of businesses and governments such as the U.S., GSA (News - Alert) are now recommending the vendors to pass Liberty Alliance testing, the Liberty Interoperable program is gaining global momentum.

 

The program had been initiated by Liberty Alliance around seven years ago, and has successfully tested a big number of products for true interoperability of identity specifications during the period.

 

Now, the Liberty Alliance has been planning to expand the Liberty Interoperable program within Kantara Initiative in order to offer mass availability of proven interoperable multi-protocol identity solutions.

 

At a full-matrix testing event, Roger Sullivan, president at the Kantara Initiative board of trustees, president of Liberty Alliance and vice president, Oracle (News - Alert) Identity Management, said that the event included more vendors than ever before, reflecting the worldwide demand among enterprises and governments for SAML 2.0 identity-enabled solutions that have proven to interoperate.

 

Sullivan said noted that the program is deisgned to test against additional identity standards and protocols, so the organizations can count on Liberty Interoperable for products that have proven to meet interoperability requirements today and over the long-term.

 

In this year's program, enhanced SAML 2.0 testing scenarios between Service Provider and Identity Provider had been included. Liberty Alliance developed the eGovernment SAML 2.0 profile and its requisite test plan on the basis of vital feedback and inputs from the Danish, New Zealand and US governments.

 

A number of testing processes such as multiple SP logout scenarios, requested authentication context comparisons, and other aspects of SAML 2.0 had been included into the eGovernment profile, which are vital to meet interoperability, privacy, security and transparency requirements in the global eGovernment sector.

 

The products that demonstrated interoperability based on a variety of SAML 2.0 conformance modes during the summer.

 

The testing dates for Liberty Alliance has been announced in June, and the event was the first one to Feature New SAML 2.0 eGovernment Profile. Earlier, the organization hit the headlines when the Internet Society joined its management board in February.