OATH Releases Update

WASHINGTON CROSSING, Pa. -- OATH, the initiative for Open AuTHentication, today announced that the organization delivered a major update to the OATH Reference Architecture with the release of version 2.0 that builds upon the strong foundation of the original Reference Architecture released in May 2005.

This significantly updated document reflects the current state-of-the-art of strong authentication technology and also sets the vision for the future. It provides a strong foundation for OATH member companies and their customers towards a comprehensive open and industry-endorsed technology solution for strong authentication. The document also sets a high-level technical roadmap for OATH members, by helping identify key gaps and develop industry-wide standards to address them.

The Reference Architecture includes two key new concepts that will help in wider adoption and expansion of strong authentication technology. The updated Reference Architecture promotes a vision of risk-based strong authentication where a risk level is assessed for each transaction and the appropriate level of strong authentication is used. It also presents several models for the sharing of strong authentication credentials across organizations and networks. This includes leveraging existing federated identity and emerging user-centric identity technologies such as OpenID and CardSpace.

“The delivery of this new Reference Architecture document represents thousands of hours spent with OATH member companies as well as significant research into the successful implementation of OATH-derived technologies with our member’s customer-sites. This has resulted in a much stronger reference architecture for developing industry-backed standards for open authentication,” said Siddharth Bajaj, OATH Joint Coordination Committee (JCC) Chair and principal in the Innovation Group of VeriSign, Inc. “I am particularly pleased with how OATH member companies were generous with time provided for their key technology personnel to contribute to this Reference Architecture in a very meaningful way.”

Initiative for Open AuTHentication (OATH)